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A LETTER 
TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

EDMUND BURKE 



EDITED 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

JAMES HUGH MOFFATT 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL 

PHILADELPHIA 



HINDS, NOBLE & ELDREDGE 

Philadelphia New York 



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Xvm <>nDf9s •?eraiyed 
SEP 13 1904 
/7 ^onyrfsrht Entry 

CLASI a^ xXo. No. 3 

' COPY B 



Copyright, 1904, 
Hinds, Noble & Eldredgb. 



PREFACE. 



A regulation of the State Board of Law Examiners of 
Pennsylvania, which went into effect in January, 1903, 
requires that all applicants for examination and registra- 
tion as students at law " must be able to pass a satisfac- 
tory examination upon the subject-matter, the style and 
the structure, and to answer simple questions on the 
lives of the authors" of twelve English classics, among 
which are Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, 
and his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. The lack of any 
well annotated edition of Burke's Letter led to the prepa- 
ration of this volume, which aims to present in convenient 
form the facts of Burke's life, the text of the Letter, and 
the notes necessary to a full understanding of the text. 
In the Notes facts of special interest to students at law 
have been pointed out. 

The interest and value of this Letter is not limited to 
students at law. It will be found of great value in all 
schools as a model of style and reasoning. Its subject- 
matter is also of great interest, for it reveals the attitude 
and arguments of many English statesmen in the critical 
struggle which led to the founding of our nation. 

The text of the Letter is that of the first edition, cor- 
rected by comparison with the fourth edition, and the 
first edition of Burke's collected works. In the prepara- 



111 



iv PREFACE. 

tion of the Notes, the editor acknowledges his indebted- 
ness to earlier editors, especially to Prof. F. G. Selby. 
He desires to express his appreciation of the sympathetic 
help of his colleagues. Professors Albert H. Smyth and 
John Louis Haney, and of his classmate, Irvin Shupp, Jr. 
He is especially grateful to Prof. Franklin Spencer 
Edmonds for his concise account of the origin and applica- 
tion of THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS, which forms the third 
section of the Introduction; and to David Wallerstein, 
Esq., whose enthusiastic admiration of Burke and ac- 
quaintance with his writings led to many valuable sugges- 
tions in the Introduction and the Notes. The editor 
hopes that those who read this Letter may show in their 
practice of law and their criticism of the principles of 
law the same spirit of humanity which characterises all 
of Burke's writings. 

J. H. M. 
Central High School, 
May 21, IdOJf. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Introduction : pace 

The Life of Edmund Burke vii 

Burke and the American Kevolution . . xxii 

The Writ of Habeas Corpus xxxiii 

Bibliography xxxvii 

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol .... 1 

Notes ^^ 



INTRODUCTION, 



THE LIFE OF EDMUND BURKE. 

When Edmund Burke died in 1797, George Canning 
wrote to one of Lord Malmesbury's embassy : " There is 
but one event, but that is an event for the world, — Burke 
is dead. . . , He is the man that will mark this age, 
marked as it is in itself by events, to all time." ^ During 
the twenty-nine years from 1765 to 1794, in which Burke 
was a member of the House of Commons, he was actively 
interested in every measure of constitutional and colonial 
importance. As a political pamphleteer and legislator, 
he helped to remove the unjust restrictions from Ireland's 
commerce ; to grant the privileges of citizenship to Eoman 
Catholics; to preserve the independence of the represen- 
tatives of the people in Parliament from the unconsti- 
tutional influence of the King; and to protect the King 
and the Church from the destructive influence of the 
Trench Kevolutionists. His greatest work was in dis- 
cussing and determining the relation of the imperial 
government to the colonies, both in the case of the 
Americans, who claimed their rights as Englishmen, and 
of the people of India whose sufferings from English 
injustice were scarcely known in England. 

» Malmesbury's Diaries, London, 1844, III. 398. 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

Burke's writings have been prized for one hundred and 
twenty years by statesmen and scholars, not so much for 
their historical value as for their political principles 
and literary style. "Burke is the one Englishman who 
has succeeded in attaining first rate eminence both in 
politics and in literature by one and the same set of 
writings." ^ Yet he was always handicapped by the cir- 
cumstances of his life. His family had none of that social 
influence which is so essential to success in English public 
life; he was seldom in good health and always more or 
less in debt. The secret of his success can be found 
in his unselfish sympathy and far-reaching ability and 
zeal for work. As his cousin said, Burke was " full of 
real business, intent upon doing solid good to his country 
as much as if he was to receive twenty per cent from the 
commerce of the whole empire which he labours to 
improve and extend."^ Burke himself, in the Letter to a 
Nohle Lord, said, " Nitor in adversum is the motto for 
a man like me. ... At every step of my progress in 
life, (for in every step was I traversed and opposed), 
and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show 
my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title 
to the honour of being useful to my country, by a proof 
that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws and 
the whole system of its interests both abroad and at 
home." ^ 

Burke's father was a well-to-do lawyer of Dublin 
and gave his son a good education at the boarding school 
of Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker, and afterwards at 

1 Sir J. F. Stephen, Horc^ Sabbaticce, 3rd Series, 1894, p. 93. 

2 Prior's Life of Burke, 5th Edition, London, 1854, p. 89. 
8 Burke's Works, Boston, 1899, V. 193. 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

Trinity College,^ Dublin, where Edmund formed an excel- 
lent habit of general reading, spending three hours every 
day in the library. Later in life, Burke wrote to his own 
son: "Reading, and much reading, is good; but the 
power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own 
mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises, is 
far better." ^ For two years after graduation, Burke 
studied law in his father's office and then in 1750 went to 
London to complete his legal education, for a regulation 
required that candidates for the Irish Bar should study 
in the legal societies of the Inner and Middle Temple, 
London. 

Burke always had a high veneration for the legal pro- 
fession; in his speech on 'American Taxation, he said of 
Mr. Grenville: "He was bred to the law, which is, in 
my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences ; 
a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the 
understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put 
together ; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily 
bom, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the 
same proportion."^ Burke, however, neglected his stud- 
ies; he was more interested in literature and in the pro- 
ceedings of Parliament. Many evenings he spent, an 
eager listener, in the gallery of the House of Commons, 
which later, in his parliamentary career, was often cleared 
of visitors lest his eloquence should have too great an 
influence on the public. Burke was soon forced to make 
his own living, chiefly by writing for publishers, because 
his disappointed father refused to continue his annual 



* Burke's Correspondence, London, 1844, I. 426. 
2 Burke's Works, II. 37. 



X INTRODUCTION. 

allowance of £100. His first important publications were 
A Vindication of Natural Society^ an indirect reply to 
Lord Bolingbroke's defence of natural religion, and A 
Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the 
Suhlime and Beautiful, which, though now obsolete, had 
the important effect of causing the German scholar, Lea- 
sing, to write Laokoon, one of the earliest essays on mod- 
ern art criticism. A year later Burke began An Abridg- 
ment of English History, which he never completed. His 
more important historical work was the editing of the 
Annual Register, which is still published, giving a brief 
summary of the important events of each year. 

These four works are his only non-political writings. 
Everything else that Burke wrote was in direct support 
of some public measure. In 1761 he entered upon the 
feverish life of a politician, becoming private secretary 
of William Gerard Hamilton, who was Chief Secretary 
of the Earl of Halifax, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 
Hamilton was nicknamed " Single Speech," because his 
first speech in the House of Commons was so excellent 
that he never ventured to make another. Hamilton rec- 
ognised Burke's ability and attempted to monopolise his 
efforts by securing for him an annual pension of £300. 
Burke refused to become his political slave and wisely 
gave up the pension. 

On his return to England, Burke joined with his 
friends, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Keynolds, Oliver 
Goldsmith, and others, to form the famous Literary Club. 
Burke was one of the few men whom Dr. Johnson re- 
spected as equals. He said: "Burke is the only man 
whose common conversation corresponds with the general 



INTRODUCTION. ad 

fame wHch lie has in the world. Take up whatever topic 
you please, he is ready to meet you. . . . He does not 
talk from a desire of distinction, but because his mind is 
full. . . . He is never what we call hum-drum; never 
unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off." 
When Burke with other friends came to bid farewell to 
Johnson on his death bed, he expressed a fear that so many 
callers might oppress the sick man. Johnson replied : " I 
must be in a wretched state, indeed, when your company 
would not be a delight to me." ^ 

In 1765 Burke became private secretary of the Prime 
Minister, the Marquis of Rockingham. Burke proved to 
be the life of the Rockingham party, the conservative 
Whigs. He worked so hard to keep this party together 
and active, that many of his contemporaries looked upon 
him as a mere partisan. His friend Oliver Goldsmith 
expressed this opinion in his humorous poem. Retaliation: 

"Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much; 
Wlio, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind." 

Yet in 1783 this very party was driven from the control 
of the government by the defeat of Fox's East India Bill, 
which Burke probably had prepared and had supported in 
the House of Commons. Ten years later when many of 
the' Whigs sympathised with the revolutionists in France, 
Burke did not hesitate to desert the party. The Whigs 
did not regain the control of the government for half 
a century. 

iBoswell's Life of Johnson, edited by Birkbeck Hill, Oxford, 1887, 
IV. 19, 167, 407, V. 33. 



xii INTRODUCTION. 

Though not a partisan, Burke was a strong supporter 
of the party system of government. Most statesmen 
had connived at it as a necessary evil of which the 
less said the better. In 1770, in his pamphlet, Thouglits 
on the Cause of the Present Discontents, Burke publicly 
defended party. "Party is a body of men united for 
promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest 
upon some particular principle in which they are all 
agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive, 
that anyone believes in his own politics, or thinks them 
to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of 
having them reduced into practice. . . . When bad 
men combine, the good must associate.'' ^ 

Burke had ample opportunity to become acquainted 
with the strength of party government, for he was in the 
Opposition, or minority, for twenty-seven of his twenty- 
nine years in Parliament. The chief work of his party 
during the short period of its power was Burke's Econom- 
ical Eeform Bill, which wisely reduced the expenses of 
government about £72,000 a year, by limiting the pension 
list and by abolishing many useless, lucrative positions 
at court. This effectually weakened the King's party 
which had granted these positions as bribes to members of 
the House of Commons. The income of the Paymaster 
General was also regulated; and Burke himself was the 
first Paymaster to receive the reduced salary. 

Burke was never appointed to a higher office than this 
of Paymaster General, which he held in 1782 and again 
in 1783. It seems strange that when his party was in 
power, Burke was not given a position in the cabinet, 

* Burke's Works. I. 530, 626. 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

which his abilities and services certainly merited. Many 
explanations, more or less satisfactory, have been sug- 
gested.^ His ungoverned excesses of party zeal and po- 
litical passion made him an uncomfortable colleague. 
Lord Lansdowne declared that Burke "was so violent, 
so overbearing, so arrogant, so intractable, that to have 
got on with him in a cabinet would have been utterly and 
absolutely impossible." Burke was always harassed by 
unjust prejudices and libels. Many men thought he 
was the author of the scurrilous Junius* Letters, now 
known to be by Philip Francis. His relatives were looked 
upon with suspicion as Irish adventurers. Sir Gilbert 
Elliot said: "Burke has now got such a train after 
himi as would sink anybody but himself — his son, who 
is quite nauseated by all mankind; his brother, who is 
liked better than his son, but is rather offensive with 
animal spirits and with brogue; and his cousin. Will 
Burke, who is just returned unexpectedly from India, as 
much ruined as when he went many years ago, and who is 
a fresh charge on any prospects of power that Burke may 
ever have." Another hindrance was his notoriously strait- 
ened circumstances. Like his fellow-countryman, Oliver 
Goldsmith, Burke was always in debt and always too 
generous. He sent the young painter, James Barry, to 
the Continent to perfect his art. In 1768 he purchased 
an estate of six hundred acres near Beaconsfield, about 
twenty-four miles from London. He probably borrowed 
the £20,000 to pay for it, partly from the Marquis of 
Rockingham, although the mortgages on the property 

iMorley's Burke (English Men of Letters Series), pp. 139-140. 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

were not paid off until his widow sold it fifteen years 
after his death. 

The last ten years of Burke's public life were occupied 
with work for India and against France. In 1783 he 
was appointed a member of a committee of the House 
of Commons to investigate the administration of the 
East India Company, which had governed India since 
1757 when Clive drove out the French. Chiefly through 
Burke's indefatigable efforts. Parliament learned of the 
cruelty and injustice of the Englishmen who went out 
to India as clerks and returned to England in a few 
years with enormous fortunes which they had extorted 
from the natives. India was so far distant from Eng- 
land, nine months in time, that the English in India 
did not feel responsible for justice in office. 

After much deliberation Burke was forced to the con- 
clusion that the responsibility for the unjust government 
rested upon the shoulders of Warren Hastings, who as 
Governor General had supreme control in India from 
1773 to 1785. When Hastings resigned and returned to 
England in 1786, Burke urged the House of Commons to 
impeach him. After two years of debate, the House 
finally appointed a committee of managers, with Burke as 
chairman, to impeach Hastings before the House of 
Lords in Westminster Hall. The trial began in 1788 and 
was not fiiuished until 1795, although the court was in ses- 
sion only one hundred and forty-eight days, because the 
judges were so often absent on circuit. At first Hastings 
had been regarded as a great criminal, but the increased 
familiarity with his actions and the length of his trial 
changed public opinion until he was looked upon as a 



INTRODUCTION. ■ xy 

hero, and the managers were denounced as persecutors. 
Most of the managers, such as Fox and Sheridan, after 
their first great orations, lost interest in the trial, but 
Burke manfully kept up the vigorous prosecution, despite 
its unpopularity. 

Hastings was finally acquitted. But Burke's labour had 
not been in vain. Though he failed to punish the cul- 
prit, he destroyed the system of unjust government. 
Thereafter the Governor Generals of India were not ap- 
pointed from the officials of the Company, but from 
the nobles of England, experienced in diplomacy and 
statecraft, and responsible both for their personal and 
national honour. Burke also proved that English justice 
should be the same all over the world; what was con- 
sidered injustice in London should be considered injustice 
in Calcutta. No longer did oppression and corruption 
continue to be the guiding maxims of English policy. 
Burke taught " the great lesson that Asiatics have rights, 
and that Europeans have obligations ; that a superior race 
is bound to observe the highest current morality of the 
time in all its dealings with the subject race. Burke is 
entitled to our lasting reverence as the first apostle and 
great upholder of integrity, mercy, and honour in the rela- 
tion between his countrymen and their humble depend- 
ents."^ Burke himself wrote one year before his death: 
*^If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never 
done,) it should be for those [services] in which for four- 
teen years without intermission I showed the most in- 
dustry and had the least success : I mean in the affairs of 
India. They are those on which I value myself the most : 

* Morley's Burke, p. 133. 



xvi INTRODUCTION. 

most for the importance, most for the labour, most for the 
judgment, most for constancy and perseverance in the 
pursuit. Others may value them most for the intention. 
In that, surely, they are not mistaken." ^ 

During the Erench Kevolution Burke endeavoured to 
protect Kngland from the revolutionary influence, al- 
though many of his friends applauded the efforts of the 
French to assert their rights as men. Charles James Fox, 
for instance, when he heard of the fall of the Bastile, 
exclaimed : " How much the greatest event it is that ever 
happened in the world ! and how much the best !" ^ 

But Burke's conservative heart was filled with dread at 
the violence of the revolutionists in overturning the long- 
established institutions of government. They had dis- 
carded the foundation of all of Burke's political reason- 
ing — experience. In their paroxysm of freedom, they 
declared that whatever had been was evil; good could 
only come from something new, not from an expedient 
modification of the old order. 

Burke found that his efforts in the House of Commons 
to suppress sympathy for the French were inadequate. 
He determined to address the final court of appeal, the 
larger audience of the English public. In the fall of 
1790, he published his Beflections on the Revolution in 
France. Thirty thousand copies were immediately sold. 
With the possible exception of Swift's Conduct of the 
Allies, no pamphlet ever had such an immediate and 
permanent political effect. The majority of Englishmen 
had not known what to think of the French Eevolution. 

1 Burke's Works, V. 192. 

2 Russell's Memoirs of Fox, Phila., 1853, II. 397. 



INTRODUCTION. xvii 

When Burke made strong appeals to their emotions and 
gave them good reasons for opposing the Revolution, they 
immediately adopted his arguments as their own. 

As the Revolution proceeded and Burke's sane predic- 
tions of the depreciation of paper currency, of the 
instability of the French King, of the abolition of Chris- 
tianity, were fulfilled, men began to look upon him with 
wonder as a political prophet. Most remarkable was his 
prediction of the rise of such a military despot as Na- 
poleon proved to be. "In the weakness of one kind of 
authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an 
army will remain for some time mutinous and full of 
faction, until some popular general, who understands 
the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the 
true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men 
upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal ac- 
count. There is no other way of securing military obe- 
dience in this state of things. But the moment in which 
that event shall happen, the person who really commands 
the army is your master, — the master (that is little) of 
your king, the master of your assembly, the master of 
your whole republic." ^ 

The Reflections should not be read to learn the history 
of the Revolution; it is rather an advocate's plea against 
it. Burke did not do justice to the needs for a revolution ; 
he exaggerated the violence of the mob. Despite his 
prejudice and over-anxiety which mar many passages, 
there are many paragraphs of surpassing beauty of ex- 
pression and soundness of political wisdom. The most 
famous example of his rhetoric is his description of 

1 Burke's Works, III. 524. 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

Marie Antoinette : " It is now sixteen or seventeen years 
since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at 
Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which 
she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. 
I saw her Just above the horizon, decorating and cheering 
the elevated sphere she just began to move in, — glitter- 
ing like the morning-star, full of life and splendour and 
joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must 
I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation 
and that fall. Little did I dream, when she added titles 
of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful 
love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp 
antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom! little 
did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters 
fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of 
men of honour, and of cavaliers ! I thought ten thousand 
swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge 
even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age 
of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and 
calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is 
extinguished forever." ^ 

Burke's political wisdom is well shown in his definition 
of government and of society : " Government is a con- 
trivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants,^'^ 
" Society is, indeed, a contract. . . . It is a partner- 
ship in all science, a partnership in all art, a partner- 
ship in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends 
of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many genera- 
tions, it becomes a partnership not only between those who 

1 Burke's Works, III. 331. 

2 Burke's Works, III. 310. 



, INTRODUCTION. xix 

are living, but between those who are living, those who 
are dead, and those who are to be born." ^ 

The influence of Burke's Reflections has not been con- 
fined to his contemporaries. Mr. Lecky says : " It is not 
too much to say that it contains pages of an eloquence 
which has never in any language been surpassed, and 
that no other English book affords so many lessons of 
enduring value to those who are engaged in the study 
either of the British Constitution or of the general prin- 
ciples of government. Together with the Appeal from 
the New to the Old Whigs, which is its supplement and 
its defence, it should be read, re-read, and thoroughly mas- 
tered by everyone who desires to acquire wide and deep 
views on political questions, and to understand the best 
English political philosophy of the eighteenth century." ^ 

The rest of Burke's life was spent in urging England 
to increase her defences against the possibility of a 
Erench invasion, and in denouncing the offers of peace 
made to France by the English ministers. These writings 
are of less importance. His anxiety overpowered his 
self-control. Morley says: "In splendour of rhetoric, in 
fine images, in sustention, in irony, they surpass any- 
thing that Burke wrote; but of the qualities and prin- 
ciples that, far more than his rhetoric, have made Burke 
so admirable and so great — of justice, of firm grasp of 
fact, of a reasonable sense of the probabilities of things — 
there are only traces enough to light up the gulfs of empty 
words, reckless phrases, and senseless vituperations, that 
surge and boil around them." ^ 

» Burke's Works, III. 359. 

2 Lecky's England in iSth Century. New York, 1892, VI. 390. 

^Morley's Burke, p. 199. 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

In 1794 Burke retired from Parliament and was about 
to be rewarded for his long public services by being 
raised to tbe peerage with the title of Lord Beaconsfield. 
But his only son Eichard died. Burke, in his sorrow, 
declined the peerage and accepted a pension of £3,700. 
This caused the Duke of Bedford and other sympathisers 
with Prance to criticise him in Parliament, and in 1796 
Burke published a reply, or an apology for his life, in A 
Letter to a Nohle Lord, In a noble passage on the death 
of his son, he wrote: "Had it pleased God to continue 
to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, ac- 
cording to my mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age 
I live in, a sort of founder of a family: I should have 
left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit 
can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in 
taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every lib- 
eral sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, would 
not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, 
or to any of those whom he traces in his line. . . . But 
a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and 
whose wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has 
ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my queru- 
lous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm 
has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks 
which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am 
stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and 
lie prostrate on the earth. There, and prostrate there, I 
most unfeignedly recognise the divine justice, and in 
some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself 
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel 
the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. ... I 



INTRODUCTION, xxi 

am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. 
. . . I live in an inverted order. They who ought to 
have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should 
have been to me as posterity are in the place of ances- 
tors." 1 

Two years later Burke died on the ninth of July, 1797, 
and was buried in the little church of Beaconsfield. 

A concise and sensible estimate of Burke's work and 
political position is given by Mr. Lecky: "There is no 
political figure of the eighteenth century which retains so 
enduring an interest, or which repays so amply a careful 
study, as Edmund Burke. All other statesmen seem to 
belong wholly to the past; for though many of their 
achievements remain, the profound changes that have 
taken place in the conditions of English political life have 
destroyed the significance of their policy and their ex- 
ample. A few fine flashes of rhetoric, a few happy epi- 
grams, a few laboured speeches which now seem cold, 
lifeless, and commonplace, are all that remain of the 
eloquence of the Pitts, of Pox, of Sheridan, or of Plunket. 
But of Burke it may be truly said, that there is scarcely 
any serious political thinker in England who has not 
learnt much from his writings, and whom he has not pro- 
foundly influenced either in the way of attraction or in 
the way of repulsion. As an orator, he has been sur- 
passed by some, as a practical politician he has been sur- 
passed by many, and his judgments of men and things 
were often deflected by violent passions, by strong an- 
tipathies, by party spirit, by exaggerated sensibility, by a 
strength of imagination and of affection, which contin- 

» Burke's Works, V. 207, 208. 



xxii INTRODUCTION. 

ually invested particular objects witli a halo of super- 
stitious reverence. But no other politician or writer has 
thrown the light of so penetrating a genius on the nature 
and workings of the British Constitution, has impressed 
his principles so deeply on both of the great parties in 
the State, and has left behind him a richer treasure of 
political wisdom applicable to all countries and to all 
times. He had a peculiar gift of introducing into tran- 
sient party conflicts observations drawn from the most 
profound knowledge of human nature, of the first prin- 
ciples of government and legislation, and of the more 
subtle and remote consequences of political institutions, 
and there is perhaps no English prose writer since Bacon 
whose works are so thickly starred with thought. The 
time may come when they will be no longer read. The 
time will never come in which men would not grow the 
wiser by reading them." ^ 



II 

BURKE AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

It is difficult to determine the relative merit of Burke's 
writings. William Hazlitt says: "There is no single 
speech of Mr. Burke which can convey a satisfactory idea 
of his powers of mind: to do him justice, it would be 
necessary to quote all his works; the only specimen of 
Burke is all that he wrote/' ^ Burke's Reflections on the 
Revolution in France is probably his best known work, 
as Mr. Lecky has said. Matthew Arnold, however, gives 

iLecky's England in i8th Century, III. 381-382. 

2Wm. Hazlitt: Sketches and Essays, London, 1873, p. 408. 



INTRODUCTION. xxiii 

precedence to Burke's writings for Ireland: "Burke is 
the greatest of our political thinkers and writers. But his 
political thinking and writing has more value on some 
subjects than on others; the value is at its highest when 
the subject is Ireland." ^ 

Here in America it is natural that Burke's American 
speeches should be most popular, and in this opinion many 
Englishmen agree. John Morley says : " Of all Burke's 
writings none are so fit to secure unqualified and unan- 
imous admiration as the three pieces on this momentous 
struggle: the Speech on American Taxation (April 19, 
1774) ; the Speech on Conciliation with America (March 
22, 1775) ; and the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777). 
. . . It is no exaggeration to say that they compose 
the most perfect manual in our literature, or in any liter- 
ature, for one who approaches the study of public affairs, 
whether for knowledge or for practice. They are an ex- 
ample without fault of all the qualities which the critic, 
whether a theorist, or an actor, of great political situa- 
tions should strive by night and by day to possess. 
. . . If their subject were as remote as the quarrel 
between the Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between 
Kome and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the 
world owes the opportunity of the most important of polit- 
ical experiments, we should still have everything to learn 
from the author's treatment ; the vigorous grasp of masses 
of compressed detail, the wide illumination from great 
principles of human experience, the strong and masculine 
feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and 

"^Edmund Burke on Ireland, edited by M. Arnold, London, 1881, p. vi. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION. 

freedom, the large and generous interpretation of ex- 
pediency, the morality, the vision, the noble temper."^ 

Burke was not vainly boasting when he wrote: "I 
think I know America. If I do not, my ignorance is in- 
curable, for I have spared no pains to understand it." ^ 
" The first session I sat in Parliament, I found it neces- 
sary to analyse the whole commercial, financial, constitu- 
tional, and foreign interests of Great Britain and its 
empire."^ One of his earliest publications was An Ac- 
count of the European Settlements in America, which is 
still an authority for the early colonies and trade; a book 
which George Washington put into his own library. The 
early volumes of the Annual Register are full of refer- 
ences to the colonies. 

Burke was personally interested in America. In 1T55 
he had a serious intention of emigrating to America where 
a place of credit in one of the provinces had been offered 
to him, but his father persuaded him to remain in Eng- 
land. Two years later in apologising to his old school- 
mate, Kichard Shackleton, for not answering letters, 
Burke wrote : " What appearance there may have been of 
neglect, arose from my manner of life: chequered with 
various designs; sometimes in London, sometimes in re- 
mote parts of the country; sometimes in France, and 
shortly, please God, to be in America." * He did not go 
to America ; but from 1771 to the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion he acted as agent for the colony of New York, re- 
ceiving a salary of £500 a year. 

1 Morley's Burke, p. 78. 

2 See page 23. 

3 Burke's Works, V. 191. 

* Burke's Correspondence, I. 32. 



INTRODUCTION. xxv 

When Burke first entered Parliament, he was plunged 
into the thick of the struggle with the colonies. At the 
close of the French and Indian War in 1763, the Prime 
Minister, George Grenville, determined that a revenue 
should be raised in the colonies toward paying for the 
war and for the standing army which it was thought wise 
to maintain in America. He attempted to impose a 
small stamp tax on all legal papers used in the colonies. 
The colonists, well educated in law as Burke pointed out, 
indignantly opposed the principle of this tax as contrary 
to their rights as Englishmen, affirming that they could 
not lawfully he taxed by a House of Commons in which 
they were not represented. So violent was their resistance, 
that the first work of the Rockingham ministry was to 
repeal the Stamp Act. Unfortunately this ministry was 
not strong and was forced to resign in the summer of 
1766. The succeeding ministry, led by Charles Town- 
shend in 1767 passed a bill which imposed small duties 
on all tea, paper, glass, red lead, white lead, and painters' 
colours exported to the colonies. The colonists at once 
agreed among themselves not to import any goods from 
England as long as these duties were in force. These 
non-importation agreements lessened the trade of the 
English merchants so much that they joined with the 
Whigs and in 1770 repealed all the duties except that on 
tea. 

This small tea duty was enough to keep up the irrita- 
tion of the colonists. But no serious act of opposition 
occurred until late in 1773, when the citizens of Boston 
threw into the harbour a ship-load of tea which the Eng- 
lish had attempted to land. Angered by the news of this 



xxvi INTRODUCriON. 

Boston Tea Party, Parliament closed the harbour of Bos- 
ton and annulled the charter of Massachusetts. Some of 
the more moderate members of the House of Commons 
tried to prevent further violence by proposing the repeal 
of the duty on tea. Burke supported the motion in his 
speech on American Taxation, in which he reviewed the 
history of the attempts to tax the colonies, which he sat- 
irised as mere makeshifts. The motion was badly defeated. 
In less than a year Burke made another effort to urge 
measures of conciliation. But the enraged legislators 
were in no mood to be convinced by the arguments of his 
speech on Conciliation with America and his resolutions 
of conciliation were defeated by a vote of 270 to 78. Al- 
though on the same subject, these two speeches were very 
different. \ Prof. Goodrich says : " His ^ standpoint ' in the 
first was England. His topics were the inconsistency and 
folly of the ministry in their ^ miserable circle of occa- 
sional arguments and temporary expedients' for raising 
a revenue in America. His object was to recall the House 
to the original principles of the English colonial system — 
that of regulating the trade of the colonies, and making it 
subservient to the interests of the mother country, while 
in other respects she left them ' every characteristic mark 
of a free people in all their internal concerns.' His 
* standpoint' in the second speech was America, His 
topics were her growing population, agriculture, com- 
merce, and fisheries; the causes of her fierce spirit of lib- 
erty; the impossibility of repressing it by force; and the 
consequent necessity of some concession on the part of 
England. His object was (waiving all abstract questions 
about the right of taxation) to show that Parliament 



INTRODUCTION. xxvii 

ought ' to admit the people of the colonies into an interest 
in the Constitution,' by giving them (like Ireland, Wales, 
Chester, and Durham) a share in the representation; and 
to do this, by leaving internal taxation to the colonial As- 
semblies, since no one could think of an actual representa- 
tion of America in Parliament at the distance of three 
thousand miles. The two speeches were equally diverse in 
their spirit. The first was in a strain of incessant attack, 
full of the keenest sarcasm, and shaped from beginning 
to end for the purpose of putting down the ministry. 
The second, like the plan it proposed, was conciliatory; 
temperate and respectful toward Lord North [the Prime 
Minister] ; designed to inform those who were ignorant of 
the real strength and feelings of America; instinct with 
the finest philosophy of man and of social institutions; 
and intended, if possible, to lead the House, through 
Lord North's scheme, into a final adjustment of the dis- 
pute on the true principles of English liberty." ^ 

Burke was at this time representative in the House of 
Commons for the important commercial city of Bristol. 
In 1774 the Whigs of B'ristol had become dissatisfied with 
their representatives, who seemed to be little interested in 
their affairs and opinions. Several of the leading mer- 
chants trading with the colonies asked Burke to become 
a candidate. After an exciting contest he was elected 
one of Bristol's two representatives. 

Burke, however, never was popular at Bristol. He 
knew only a few of the citizens, and he seemed to neglect 
the means of gaining popularity. After his election had 
been confirmed by the House of Commons, he refused to 

1 C. A. Goodrich: Select British Eloquence, New York, 1853, p. 215. 



xxviii INTRODUCTION. 

return to Bristol with his colleague to be "chaired," to 
take part in the triumphal celebration of his supporters. 
During the six years in which he represented Bristol, he 
visited it only three times. 

The men of Bristol did not like his speeches in favour 
of admitting the Eoman Catholics to the privileges of 
citizenship; they revived the old story that he was a 
Jesuit. His support of the Roman Catholics and of the 
Dissenters was the result of his natural tolerance in reli- 
gion which had been strengthened by the circumstances 
of his life. His schoolmaster had been a Quaker; his 
mother and his wife had been educated in the Roman 
Catholic faith. Burke himself was a staunch Protestant. 

Burke proved to be even more independent than his 
predecessors of the instructions of his constituents. On 
the very day of his election, he had frankly told them 
that he would act in Parliament as he thought best, per- 
haps not as they wished. " Certainly, gentlemen, it ought 
to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live 
in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the 
most unreserved communication with his constituents. 
Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their 
opinions high respect; their business unremitted atten- 
tion. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasure, 
his satisfactions, to theirs, — and above all, ever, and in all 
cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his un- 
biassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened 
conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, 
or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from 
your pleasure, — no, nor from the law and the Constitu- 
tion. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of 



INTRODUCTION. xxix 

which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes 
you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he be- 
trays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your 
opinion." ^ 

The test of these principles soon came. The outbreak 
of the American war greatly crippled the trade of Bris- 
tol; and the majority of the merchants became anxious 
that England should speedily put down the Revolution. 
Contrary to their wishes, Burke continued to oppose the 
efforts of the ministry. In 1778 the House of Co mm ons 
proposed to relax some of the unjust restrictions upon 
Irish conunerce. The merchants of Bristol, fearing an- 
other decrease in their trade, protested against the bill, 
and even ordered Burke to defeat it. Burke disregarded 
these instructions and supported the bill, writing to his 
constituents that he could not uphold the selfish interests 
of Bristol at the sacrifice of those of all Great Britain. 

Another cause of Burke's unpopularity resulted from 
the attempt made early in 1777 to bum the vessels, quays, 
and warehouses of Bristol. When captured, the incen- 
diary, " Jack the Painter," declared that he was an Amer- 
ican. Immediately it was asserted, without a vestige of 
truth or reason, that Burke's support of the colonies was 
responsible for the crime. 

Burke's voluntary absence from the House of Commons 
was also the cause of much criticism in Bristol. He 
felt that the ineffective opposition in the Commons was 
of no avail and served only to drive the ministry to 
harsher measures. When the Commons was considering 
a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act during the Amer- 

1 Burke's Works, II. 95. 



XXX 



INTRODUCTION. 



ican war, Burke and many friends stayed away from the 
sessions. His action was misunderstood even by his 
friends in Bristol, who wrote to him for an explanation. 
In a personal letter to Richard Champion, 21 Feb. 1777, 
Burke said: "We shall publish no declaration. I am 
sorry for it, though many are of opinion that the time 
does not server I believe I shall write to you at Bristol. 
Many ask why I did not attend the habeas- corpus; — be- 
cause I did not like the bill, nor any of the proposed or 
accepted amendments; and I should have the former to 
oppose against the majority, and the latter against a great 
part of the minority. I stay away from this, as I do from 
all public business, because I know I can do no sort of 
good by attending; but think, and am sure, I should do 
the work of that faction which is ruining us, by keeping 
up debate, and helping to make those things plausible for 
a time which are destructive in their nature. The House 
never made so poor a figure as in the debate on that bill. 
. . . Never was a business so disgraceful to any gov* 
ernment." ^ 

Champion immediately urged Burke to make the publio 
declaration and the result was the Letter to the Sheriffs 
of Bristol, Burke went down to his quiet home at Bea- 
consfield, and after ten days wrote to Champion, 3 April, 
1777: "I sent to town, this morning, my letter to the 
sheriff of Bristol, fairly copied out, and with such cor- 
rections as the time would admit. Indeed, the continual 
interruptions under which it was written, required a much 
more accurate revisal. But if it is likely to be at all 
useful, it is far better that it should be early in its ap- 

* Burke's Correspondence, II. 148. 



INTRODUCTION. xxxi 

pearance than late, with such perfection as I am capable 
of giving it; which is undoubtedly such as never could 
compensate for any delay. 

"I have shown the letter to Lord Eockingham, Mr. 
Fox, Sir George Saville, and to Mr. Ellis. They are all 
of opinion it may be of considerable use. . 

"You will be so good as to communicate the paper to 
the sheriffs; but so as to lose as little time as possible 
in the publication. I think neither of them will differ 
from me in opinion very materially; but if they should, 
they are not responsible for the sentiments of any person 
who chooses to address a letter to them. In the general 
line of politics we must be of nearly the same way of 
thinking. I kn®w that some of our friends are fearful of 
giving offence to the Tories. If we did so by any indecent 
personality, we should be greatly to blame. But we ought 
n»t to omit any means of strengthening, encouraging, or 
informing our friends, for fear of displeasing those whom 
no management can ever reconcile to our way of thinking. 
When we speak only of things, not persons, we have a 
right to express ourselves with all possible energy; and 
if any one is offended, he only shows how improper that 
conduct has been, which he cannot bear to be represented 
in its true colours. Besides, this little piece, though ad- 
dressed to my constituents, is written to the public. 
Would to God that there were none of the factious ad- 
dresses to be found anywhere else than in Bristol ! Many 
things want to be explained to the nation, which they 
either never have adverted to, or forget in the rapid suc- 
cession of the late unhappy events."^ 

* Burke's Correspondence, II. 149. 



xxxii INTRODUCTION. 

Althougli the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol was fre- 
quently reprinted, it did not reconcile Burke's constitu- 
ents to his public conduct. When the next election was 
held in 1780, a strong opposition had formed against him, 
supported by a contribution of £1,000 from George III. 
Burke saw the futility of the chances of his election and 
resigned the nomination. He later was elected representa- 
tive for the small town of Malton. 

In his farewell speech to his constituents in Bristol, 
Burke well said : " Gentlemen, on this serious day, when 
I come, as it were, to make up my account with you, let 
me take to myself some degree of honest pride on the 
nature of the charges that are against me. I do not here 
stand before you accused of venality, or of neglect of 
duty. It is not said, that, in the long period of my serv- 
ice, I have, in a single instance, sacrificed the slightest 
of your interests to my ambition or to my fortune. It 
is not alleged, that, to gratify any anger or revenge of my 
own, or of my party, I have had a share in wronging or 
oppressing any description of men, or any one man in 
any description. No! the charges against me are all of 
one kind: that I have pushed the principles of general 
justice and benevolence too far, — further than a cautious 
policy would warrant, and further than the opinions of 
many would go along with me. In every accident which 
may happen through life, in pain, in sorrow, in depres- 
sion, and distress, I will call to mind this accusation, and 
be comforted." ^ 

1 Burke's Works, II. 423. 



INTRODUCTION. xxxiii 



III 



Habeas Corpus is the term applied to a writ directed to 
the person detaining another and commanding him to 
produce the body of the prisoner at a certain time and 
place, to submit to whatever decision the court awarding 
the writ may determine. It is the most famous writ in 
the law; and having been used for many centuries to re- 
move illegal restraint on personal liberty, it is often 
called the Great Writ of Liberty. It takes its name from 
the characteristic words it contained when the processes 
of the English Law were written in Latin: — 

" Prsecipimus tibi quod corpus A. B. in custodia vestra deten- 
tum, ut dicitur, una cum causa captionis et detentionis susb, 
quocunque nomine idem A. B. censeatur in eadem, habeas coram 
nobis apud Westm. etc., ad subjiciendum et recipiendum ea quae 
curia nostra de eo ad tunc et ibidem ordinari contigerit in hac 
parte, etc. 

The date of the origin of the writ cannot now be ascer- 
tained. In the early days of the Common Law, there 
were various writs employed in which the phrase, "habeas 
corpus," was used, and the principle upon which it is 
issued was understood and applied by the Judges during 
the War of the Koses. The earliest precedents where it 

1 This account of The Writ of Habeas Corpus was written by 
Franklin Spencer Edmonds, Professor of Political Science, Central 
High School, and a member of the Philadelphia Bar. 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 

was used against the crown are in the reign of Henry 
VII. Afterwards its use became more frequent, and, in 
the time of Charles I., it was an admitted constitutional 
remedy. The celebrated Act of Habeas Corpus of 1679 
provided additional safeguards to insure a due observance 
of the principle of the writ, and also carefully specified 
the procedure in certain cases. It was universally re- 
garded as a great advance in the development of English 
liberty, and one author declared that its passage "extin- 
guished all the resources of oppression." 

The English colonies in America regarded the privi- 
lege of the writ as one of the "dearest birthrights of 
Britons," and it was frequently resorted to. The Ameri- 
can colonists frequently claimed that they possessed all 
the rights, liberties and immunities of free and natural- 
bom subjects within the realm of England. This asser- 
tion was endorsed in Parliament, where it was stated at 
one time that the Americans "were the sons, not the 
"bastards of England." Eminent authorities have held 
that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus did not 
extend to the colonists until the reign of Queen Anne> 
when a statute was passed which expressly extended this 
privilege to the colonists. It is certain, however, that it 
was not unknown in the colonies prior to this time, and 
a few illustrations may be drawn from early American 
history. 

In 1688-9, there occurred a famous case in New Eng- 
land, which arose out of the unsettled political conditions 
of the time. Among other towns which were obliged to 
raise money for the government was Ipswich, of which 
Rev. Mr. Wise was minister. A town meeting was called 



INTRODUCTION. xxxv 

to act on a requisition, and as the citizens doubted the 
authority of the governor and council to raise money in 
that way, they declined making the grant. Whereupon 
Mr. Wise and jS,ve others of the principal inhabitants of 
the town were arrested, charged with contempt and high 
misdemeanours. They demanded a "habeas corpus," 
which was denied. " After a tedious and harassing delay 
the prisoners were put upon their trial. They claimed the 
privileges secured to them as Englishmen by the Magna 
Charta and the laws of England. The chief justice, how- 
ever, informed them that they must not expect that the 
laws of England would follow them to the ends of the 
earth, and concluded by telling them that they had no 
more privileges left them than not to be sold as slaves.'' ^ 
A verdict was rendered against them, but this doctrine 
that the English laws did not follow the New Englanders, 
aroused strong protest in Massachusetts. 

In New Jersey, in lYlO, the Assembly denounced one 
of the judges, William Pinhome, for having corruptly 
refused the writ of habeas corpus to Thomas Gordon, 
which they said was " the undoubted right and the great 
privilege of the subject." In Pennsylvania, while the 
Council exercised the power of discharging from illegal 
imprisonment upon petition, they som^etimes referred 
such applications to the county courts as the proper tribu- 
nals to afford relief. 

In New York, in January 1707, Makemie and Hamp- 
ton, two Presbyterian ministers, were arrested on the 
warrant of the governor, for preaching without a license. 
They refused to give bond or security that they would 

1 Washbiirn's Judicial History of Massachusetts. 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION. 

preach no more in that jurisdiction, so they were com- 
mitted to prison under the governor's warrant, which 
simply directed the prisoners to be safely kept until 
further notice and did not even attempt to designate any 
offence. On March 8 Chief Justice Mompesson allowed 
the prisoners writs of haheas corpus, but before they could 
be served the sheriff was given another warrant contain- 
ing a statement of the offence. On this the prisoners were 
admitted to bail. 

These cases are sufficient to illustrate the tendency in 
the American mind to appeal to this writ, as a protection 
to personal liberty. 

The refusal of the Parliament in 1774 to extend the 
law of habeas corpus to Canada was denounced by the 
First Continental Congress in September of that year as 
oppressive, and was subsequently recounted in the 
Declaration of Independence as one of the manifesta- 
tions on the part of the British Government of tyraimy 
over the colonies.^ 

The Constitution of the United States provides that: 
" The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not 
be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion 
the public safety may require it." Similar provisions 
are found in the constitutions of most of the states. The 
privilege of the writ is suspended by martial law, for 
that suspends all civil processes. During the Civil War 
President Lincoln suspended the privilege of the writ on 

^Extract from the Declaration of Independence: "For abolishing 
the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, establish- 
ing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so 
as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing 
the same absolute rule into these colonies." 



INTRODUCTION. xxxvii 

his own authority without the sanction of an Act of 
Congress, This gave rise to a prolonged legal controversy 
and there was a strong opinion that the President had 
overstepped the limits of his rightful authority. 

Such is the origin and record of what Blackstone 
terms "the most celebrated writ in English law." (See 
Wm. S. Church on " The Writ of Habeas Corpus.") 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



The most accessible edition of Burke's Works is that pub- 
lished in twelve volumes by Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 
1894. Many of his important speeches and letters have been 
edited for school use. The best account of his life is that of 
John Morley, in the English Men of Letters Series; Morley 
has also contributed an interesting article on Burke to the 
Encyclopedia Britannica. A more critical study of Burke's 
work may be found in Morley's Edmund Burke: a Historical 
Study, London, 1869. More detailed accounts of his life are 
those of James Prior, two volumes, London, 1854, and of 
Thomas Macknight, three volumes, London, 1858. The mere 
facts of his life are given in the Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy. Brief, interesting criticisms of Burke may be found 
in Augustine Birrell's OUter Dicta, 2nd Series, New York, 
1887; Sir James FitzJames Stephen's Horw Sahhaticw, 3rd 
Series, Macmillan, 1892 ; and in Woodrow Wilson's Mere Litera- 
ture, 1896. For some idea of Burke's friends and surroundings, 
a student should read Thackeray's English Humourists, and 
Boswell's Life of Johnson. The history of the period may be 
found in Bancroft's History of the United States, Lecky's His- 
tory of England in the 18th Century, and in Fiske's American 
Revolution. Contemporary accounts are given in Hansard's 
Parliamentary Delates and in the Annual Register* 



LETTER 

FROM 

EDMUND B U R K E, Efqj 

Onfe of the Repfefentatives in Parliament 
fot the City of Bristol, 

T o 

JOHN FARR and JOKN HARRIS, Efqrs, 
Sheriffs of that City, 

ON THB 

AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 



LONDON; 

Prmtcd fox J. D O D S L E Y, ia Pall-Mail, 
Mbccmbyii, 



A 

LETTER, &c. 



Gentlemen, 

I HA YE the honour of sending you the two last acts 
which have been passed with regard to the troubles 
in America. These acts are similar to all the rest which 
have been made on the same subject. They operate by 
the same principle; and they are derived from the very 5 
same policy. I think they complete the number of this 
sort of statutes to nine. It affords no matter for very 
pleasing reflection to observe, that our subjects diminish, 
as our laws increase. 

If I have the misfortune of differing with some of my 10 
fellow-citizens on this great and arduous subject, it is no 
small consolation to me that I do not differ from you. 
With you I am perfectly united. We are heartily agreed 
in our detestation of a civil war. We have ever expressed 
the most unqualified disapprobation of all the steps which 15 
have led to it, and of all those which tend to prolong it. 
And I have no doubt that we feel exactly the same emo- 
tions of grief and shame on all its miserable consequences ; 
whether they appear, on the one side or the other, in the 

1 



2 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

shape of victories or defeats, of captures made from the 
English on the continent, or from the English in these 
islands; of legislative regulations which subvert the lib- 
erties of our brethren, or which undermine our own. 
5 Of the first of these statutes (that for the letter of 
marque) I shall say little. Exceptionable as it may be, 
and as I think it is in some particulars, it seems the nat- 
ural, perhaps necessary result of the measures we have 
taken, and the situation we are in. The other (for a par- 

10 tial suspension of the Habeas Corpus) appears to me 
of a much deeper malignity. During its progress 
through the House of Commons, it has been amended, 
60 as to express, more distinctly than at first it did, the 
avowed sentiments of those who framed it: and the main 

15 ground of my exception to it is, because it does express, 
and does carry into execution, purposes which appear 
to me so contradictory to all the principles, not only of 
the constitutional policy of Great Britain, but even of 
that species of hostile justice, which no asperity of war 

20 wholly extinguishes in the minds of a civilized people. 

It seems to have in view two capital objects; the first, 

to enable administration to confine, as long as it shall 

think proper, those whom that act is pleased to qualify 

by the name of pirates. Those so qualified I understand 

25 to be the commanders and mariners of such privateers 
and ships of war belonging to the colonies, as in the 
course of this unhappy contest may fall into the hands 
of the crown. They are therefore to be detained in 
prison, under the criminal description of piracy, to a 

30 future trial and ignominious punishment, whenever cir- 
cumstances shall make it convenient to execute vengeance 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 3 

on them, under the colour of that odious and infamous 
offence. 

To this first purpose of the law I have no small dislike ; 
because the act does not (as all laws and all equitable 
transactions ought to do) fairly describe its object. The 5 
persons who make a naval war upon us, in consequence 
of the present troubles, may be rebels; but to call and 
treat them as pirates, is confounding, not only the nat- 
ural distinction of things, but the order of crimes ; which, 
whether by putting them from a higher part of the scale 10 
to the lower, or from the lower to the higher, is never 
done without dangerously disordering the whole frame 
of jurisprudence. Though piracy may be, in the eye of 
the law, a less offence than treason; yet as both are, in 
effect, punished with the same death, the same forfeiture, 15 
and the same corruption of blood, I never would take 
from any fellow-creature whatever any sort of advantage 
which he may derive to his safety from the pity of man- 
kind, or to his reputation from their general feelings, 
by degrading his offence, when I cannot soften his pun- 20 
ishment. The general sense of mankind tells me, that 
those offences, which may possibly arise from mistaken 
virtue, are not in the class of infamous actions. Lord 
Coke, the oracle of the English law, conforms to that 
general sense where he says, that " those things which 25 
are of the highest criminality may be of the least dis- 
grace." The act prepares a sort of masked proceeding, 
not honourable to the justice of the kingdom, and by no 
means necessary for its safety. I cannot enter into it. 
If Lord Balmerino, in the last rebellion, had driven off 30 
the cattle of twenty clans, I should have thought it would 



4 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

Have been a scandalous and low juggle, utterly unworthy 
of the manliness of an English judicature, to have tried 
him for felony as a stealer of cows. 

Besides, I must honestly tell you, that I could not 
5 vote for, or countenance in any way, a statute, which 
stigmatises, with the crime of piracy, these men, whom an 
act of parliament had previously put out of the protec- 
tion of the law. When the legislature of this kingdom 
had ordered all their ships and goods, for the mere new- 

10 created offence of exercising trade, to be divided as a 
spoil among the seamen of the navy, — to consider the 
necessary reprisal of an unhappy, proscribed, interdicted 
people, as the crime of piracy, would have appeared, in 
any other legislature than ours, a strain of the most in- 

15 suiting and most unnatural cruelty and injustice. I 
assure you I never remember to have heard of anything 
like it in any time or country. 

The second professed purpose of the act is. to detain 
in England for trial those who shall commit high treason 

20 in America. 

That you may be enabled to enter into the true spirit 
of the present law, it is necessary, gentlemen, to apprise 
you, that there is an act, made so long ago as in the 
reign of Henry the Eighth, before the existence or thought 

25 of any English colonies in America, for the trial in this 
kingdom of treasons committed out of the realm. In 
the year 1769, parliament thought proper to acquaint the 
crown with their construction of that act in a formal 
address, wherein they entreated his Majesty to cause per- 

30 sons, charged with high treason in America, to be brought 
into this kingdom for trial. By this act of Henry the 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 5 

EigHth, so construed and so applied, almost all that is sub- 
stantial and beneficial in a trial by jury is taken away 
from the subject in the colonies. This is however saying 
too little; for to try a man under that act is, in effect, to 
condemn him unheard. A person is brought hither in 5 
the dungeon of a ship's hold; thence he is vomited into 
a dungeon on land; loaded with irons, unfurnished with 
money, unsupported by friends, three thousand miles from 
all means of calling upon or confronting evidence, where 
no one local circumstance that tends to detect perjury, 10 
can possibly be judged of; — such a person may be exe- 
cuted according to form, but he can never be tried accord- 
ing to justice. 

I therefore could never reconcile myself to the bill I 
send you; which is expressly provided to remove all in- 15 
conveniences from the establishment of a mode of trial, 
which has ever appeared to me most unjust and most 
unconstitutional. Far from removing the difficulties 
which impede the execution of so mischievous a project, 
I would heap new difficulties upon it, if it were in my 20 
power. All the ancient, honest, juridical principles and 
institutions of England are so many clogs to check and 
retard the headlong course of violence and oppression. 
They were invented for this one good purpose, that 
what was not just should not be convenient. Convinced 25 
of this, I would leave things as I found them. The old, 
cool-headed, general law, is as good as any deviation dic- 
tated by present heat. 

I could see no fair, justifiable expedience pleaded to 
favour this new suspension of the liberty of the subject. 30 
If the English in the colonies can support the independ- 



6 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

ency, to which they have been -anfortunately driven, I 
suppose nobody has such a fanatical zeal for the criminal 
justice of Henry the Eighth, that he will contend for 
executions which must be retaliated tenfold on his own 
5 friends; or who has conceived so strange an idea of 
English dignity, as to think the defeats in America com- 
pensated by the triumphs at Tyburn. If, on the con- 
trary, the colonies are reduced to the obedience of the 
crown, there must be, under that authority, tribunals in 

10 the country itself, fully competent to administer justice 
on all offenders. But if there are not, and that we must 
suppose a thing so humiliating to our government, as 
that all this vast continent should unanimously concur 
in thinking, that no ill fortune can convert resistance to 

15 the royal authority into a criminal act, we may call the 
effect of our victory peace, or obedience, or what we will ; 
but the war is not ended; the hostile mind continues in 
full vigour, and it continues under a worse form. If your 
peace be nothing more than a sullen pause from arms; 

20 if their quiet be nothing but the meditation of revenge, 
where smitten pride smarting from its wounds, festers 
into new rancour, neither the act of Henry the Eighth, 
nor its handmaid of this reign, will answer any wise end 
of policy or justice. Eor if the bloody fields, which they 

25 saw and felt, are not sufficient to subdue the reason of 
America (to use the expressive phrase of a great lord in 
offi.ce) it is not the judicial slaughter, which is made in 
another hemisphere against their universal sense of jus- 
tice, that will ever reconcile them to the British govern- 

30 ment. 

I take it for granted, gentlemen, that we sympathise 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 7 

in a proper horror of all punishment further than as it 
serves for an example. To whom then does the example 
of an execution in England for this American rebellion 
apply? Remember, you are told every day, that the 
present is a contest between the two countries; and that 5 
we in England are at war for our own dignity against 
our rebellious children. Is this true? If it be, it is 
surely among such rebellious children that examples for 
disobedience should be made, to be in any degree instruc- 
tive : for who ever thought of teaching parents their duty 10 
by an example from the punishment of an undutif ul son ? 
As well might the execution of a fugitive negro in the 
plantations be considered as a lesson to teach masters 
humanity to their slaves. Such executions may indeed 
satiate our revenge; they may harden our hearts, and 15 
puff us up with pride and arrogance. Alas! this is not 
instruction ! 

If anything can be drawn from such examples by a 
parity of the case, it is to show how deep their crime and 
how heavy their punishment will be, who shall at any 20 
time dare to resist a distant power actually disposing 
of their property, without their voice or consent to the 
disposition; and overturning their franchises without 
charge or hearing. God forbid that England should ever 
read this lesson written in the blood of any of her off- 25 
spring ! 

War is at present carried on between the king's natural 
and foreign troops on one side, and the English in 
America on the other, upon the usual footing of other 
wars; and accordingly an exchange of prisoners has been 30 
regularly made from the beginning. If notwithstanding 



8 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

this hitherto equal procedure, upon some prospect of end- 
ing the war with success (which however may be delu- 
sive) administration prepares to act against those as 
traitors who remain in their hands at the end of the 
5 troubles, in my opinion we shall exhibit to the world as 
indecent a piece of injustice as ever civil fury has pro- 
duced. If the prisoners, who have been exchanged, have 
not by that exchange been virtually pardoned, the cartel 
(whether avowed or understood) is a cruel fraud ; for you 

lo have received the life of a man, and you ought to return 
a life for it, or there is no parity or fairness in the trans- 
action. 

If, on the other hand, we admit, that they who are 
actually exchanged are pardoned, but contend that you 

15 may justly reserve for vengeance those who remain unex- 
changed; then this unpleasant and unhandsome conse- 
quence will follow; that you judge of the delinquency of 
^en merely by the time of their guilt, and not by the 
heinousness of it; and you make fortune and accidents, 

20 and not the moral qualities of human action, the rule of 
your justice. 

These strange incongruities must ever perplex those, 
who confound the imhappiness of civil dissensions with 
the crime of treason. Whenever a rebellion really and 

25 truly exists, which is as easily known in fact, as it is 
difficult to define in words, government has not entered 
into such military conventions; but has ever declined all 
intermediate treaty, which should put rebels in possession 
of the law of nations with regard to war. Commanders 

30 would receive no benefits at their hands, because they 
could make no return for them. Who has ever heard 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 9 

of capitulation, and parole of honour, and exchange 
of prisoners, in the late rebellions in this kingdom? The 
answer to all demands of that sort was, "We can en- 
gage for nothing; you are at the king's pleasure." We 
ought to remember, that if our present enemies be, in 5 
reality and truth, rebels, the king's generals have no right 
to release them upon any conditions whatsoever; and they 
are themselves answerable to the law, and as much in want 
of a pardon for doing so, as the rebels whom they release. 

Lawyers, I know, cannot make the- distinction for which 10 
I contend; because they have their strict rule to go by. 
But legislators ought to do what lawyers cannot; for they 
have no other rules to bind them, but the great principles 
of reason and equity, and the general sense of mankind. 
These they are bound to obey and follow; and rather to 15 
enlarge and enlighten law by the liberality of legislative 
reason, than to fetter and bind their higher capacity by 
the narrow constructions of subordinate, artificial jus- 
tice. If we had adverted to this, we never could consider 
the convulsions of a great empire, not disturbed by a 20 
little disseminated faction, but divided by whole com- 
munities and provinces, and entire legal representatives 
of a people, as fit matter of discussion under a commis- 
sion of Oyer and Terminer. It is as opposite to reason 
and prudence, as it is to humanity and justice. 25 

This act, proceeding on these principles, that is, pre- 
paring to end the present troubles by a trial of one sort 
of hostility, under the name of piracy, and of another by 
the name of treason, and executing the act of Henry the 
Eighth according to a new and unconstitutional inter- 30 
pretation, I have thought evil and dangerous, even though 



10 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

the instruments of effecting sucli purposes had been mere- 
ly of a neutral quality. 

Bfut it really appears to me, that the means which this 
act employs are, at least, as exceptionable as the end. 
5 Permit me to open myself a little upon this subject, be- 
cause it is of importance to me, when I am obliged to 
submit to the power without acquiescing in the reason 
of an act of legislature, that I should justify my dissent 
by such arguments as may be supposed to have weight 

lo with a sober man. 

The main operative regulation of the act is to suspend 
the common law, and the statute Habeas Corpus, (the 
sole securities either for liberty or justice) with regard 
to all those who have been out of the realm, or on the high 

15 seas, within a given time. The rest of the people, as I 
understand, are to continue as they stood before. 

I confess, gentlemen, that this appears to me as bad 
in the principle, and far worse in its consequence, than 
an universal suspension of the Haheas Corpus act; and 

20 the limiting qualification, instead of taking out the sting, 
does in my humble opinion sharpen and envenom it to 
a greater degree. Liberty, if I understand it at all, is a 
general principle, and the clear right of all the subjects 
within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom seems to 

25 me a most invidious mode of slavery. But, unfortunate- 
ly, it is the kind of slavery the most easily admitted in 
times of civil discord; for parties are but too apt to for- 
get their own future safety in their desire of sacrificing 
their enemies. People without much difficulty admit the 

30 entrance of that injustice of which they are not to be 
the immediate victims. In times of high proceeding it 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 11 

is never the faction of the predominant power that is in 
danger: for no tyranny chastises its own instruments. 
It is the obnoxious and the suspected who want the pro- 
tection of law; and there is nothing to bridle the partial 
violence of state factions, but this; "that whenever an 5 
act is made for a cessation of law and justice, the whole 
people should be universally subjected to the same sus- 
pension of their franchises." '. The alarm of such a pro- 
ceeding would then be universal. It would operate as a 
sort of Call of the nation. It would become every man's 10 
immediate and instant concern to be made very sensible 
of the absolute necessity of this total eclipse of liberty. 
They would more carefully advert to every renewal, and 
more powerfully resist it. These great determined meas- 
ures are not commonly so dangerous to freedom. They 15 
are marked with too strong lines to slide into use. No 
plea, nor pretence, of inconvenience or evil example 
(which must in their nature be daily and ordinary inci- 
dents) can be admitted as a reason for such mighty oper- 
ations. But the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled 20 
away, for expedients, and by parts. The Haheas Corpus 
act supposes, contrary to the genius of most other laws, 
that the lawful magistrate may see particular men with 
a malignant eye, and it provides for that identical case. 
But when men, in particular descriptions, marked out by 25 
the magistrate himself, are delivered over by parliament 
to this possible malignity, it is not the Haheas Corpus 
that is occasionally suspended, but its spirit that is mis- 
taken, and its principle that is subverted. Indeed nothing 
is security to any individual but the common interest of 3° 
all. L.ofC. 



12 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

This act, therefore, has this distinguished evil in it, 
that it is the first partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
that has been made. The precedent, which is always 
of very great importance, is now established. For the 
5 first time a distinction is made among the people within 
this realm. Before this act, every man putting his foot 
on English ground, every stranger owing only a local 
and temporary allegiance, even negro slaves who had been 
sold in the colonies and under an act of parliament, be- 

10 came as free as every other man who breathed the same 
air with them. Now a line is drawn, which may be ad- 
vanced further and further at pleasure, on the same 
argument of mere expedience, on which it was first de- 
scribed. There is no equality among us; we are not 

15 fellow-citizens, if the mariner, who lands on the quay, 
does not rest on as firm legal ground as the merchant 
who sits in his counting-house. Other laws may injure 
the community, this dissolves it. As things now stand, 
every man in the West Indies, every one inhabitant of 

20 three unofiending provinces on the continent, every per- 
son coming from the East Indies, every gentleman who 
has travelled for his health or education, every mariner 
who has navigated the seas, is, for no other offence, under 
a temporary proscription. Let any of these facts (now 

25 become presumptions of guilt) be proved against him, 
and the bare suspicion of the crown puts him out of the 
law. It is even by no means clear to me, whether the 
negative proof does not lie upon the person apprehended 
on suspicion, to the subversion of all justice. 

30 I have not debated against this bill in its progress 
through the House; because it would have been vain to 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 13 

oppose, and impossible to correct it. It is some time since 
I liave been clearly convinced, that in the present state 
of things all opposition to any measures proposed by min- 
isters, where the name of America appears, is vain and 
frivolous. You may be sure that I do not speak of my 5 
opposition, which in all circumstances must be so; but 
that of men of the greatest wisdom and authority in the 
nation. Every thing proposed against America is sup- 
posed of course to be in favour of Great Britain. Good 
and ill success are equally admitted as reasons for per- 10 
severing in the present methods. Several very prudent, 
and very well-intentioned persons were of opinion, that 
during the prevalence of such dispositions, all struggle 
rather inflamed than lessened the distemper of the public 
councils. Finding such resistance to be considered as 15 
factious by most within doors, and by very many with- 
out, I cannot conscientiously support what is against my 
opinion, nor prudently contend with what I know is irre- 
sistible. Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve 
my activity for rational endeavours; and I hope that my 20 
past conduct has given sufficient evidence that if I am a 
single day from my place, it is not owing to indolence or 
love of dissipation. The slightest hope of doing good is 
sufficient to recall me to what I quitted with regret. In 
declining for some time my usual strict attendance, I do 25 
not in the least condemn the spirit of those gentlemen, 
who, with a just confidence in their abilities, (in which 
I claim a sort of share from my love and admiration of 
them) were of opinion that their exertions in this desper- 
ate case might be of some service. They thought, that 30 
by contracting the sphere of its application, they might 



14 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

lessen the malignity of an evil principle. Perhaps they 
were in the right. But when my opinion was so very 
clearly to the contrary, for the reasons I have just stated, 
I am sure my attendance would have been ridiculous. 
5 I must add in further explanation of my conduct, that, 
far from softening the features of such a principle, and 
thereby removing any part of the popular odium or nat- 
ural terrors attending it, I should be sorry, that anything 
framed in contradiction to the spirit of our constitution 
ID did not instantly produce, in fact, the grossest of the 
evils, with which it was pregnant in its nature. It is by 
lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely 
exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people. On 
the next unconstitutional act, all the fashionable world 

15 will be ready to say — Your prophecies are ridiculous, 
your fears are vain, you see how little of the mischiefs 
which you formerly foreboded are come to pass. Thus, 
by degrees, that artful softening of all arbitrary power, 
the alleged infrequency or narrow extent of its opera- 

20 tion, will be received as a sort of aphorism — and Mr. 
Hume will not be singular in telling us, that the felicity 
of mankind is no more disturbed by it, than by earth- 
quakes or thunder, or the other more unusual accidents 
of nature. 

25 The act of which I speak is among the fruits of the 
American war; a war in my humble opinion productive 
of many mischiefs, of a kind which distinguish it from 
all others. Not only our policy is deranged, and our em- 
pire distracted, but our laws and our legislative spirit ap- 

30 pear to have been totally perverted by it. We have made 
war on our colonies, not by arms only, but by laws. As 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 15 

hostility and law are not very concordant ideas, every step 
we have taken in this business has been made by trampling 
on some maxim of justice, or some capital principle of 
wise government. What precedents were established, 
and what principles overturned, (I will not say of English 5 
privilege, but of general justice) in the Boston Port, the 
Massachuset's Charter, the Military Bill, and all that 
long array of hostile acts of parliament, by which the war 
with America has been begun and supported! Had the 
principles of any of these acts been first exerted on English lo 
ground, they would probably have expired as soon as 
they touched it. But by being removed from our persons, 
they have rooted in our laws, and the latest posterity 
will taste the fruits of them. 

Nor is it the worst effect of this unnatural contention, 15 
that our laws are corrupted. Whilst manners remain 
entire, they will correct the vices of law, and soften it 
at length to their own temper. But we have to lament, 
that in most of the late proceedings we see very few 
traces of that generosity, humanity, and dignity of mind, 20 
which formerly characterised this nation. War suspends 
the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended 
is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike 
deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate 
their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert 25 
even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. 
By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hos- 
tile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually 
less dear to us. The very names of affection and kin- 
dred, which were the bond of charity whilst we agreed, 30 
become new incentives to hatred and rage, when the com- 



16 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

munion of our country is dissolved. We may flatter our- 
selves that we shall not fall into this misfortuna But 
we have no charter of exemption, that I know of, from 
the ordinary frailties of our nature. 

" 5 What but that blindness of heart which arises from the 
phrensy of civil contention, could have made any persons 
conceive the present situation of the British affairs as an 
object of triumph to themselves, or of congratulation to 
their sovereign ? Nothing surely could be more lamentable 

lo to those who remember the flourishing days of this king- 
dom, than to see the insane joy of several unhappy people, 
amidst the sad spectacle which our affairs and conduct 
exhibit to the scorn of Europe. We behold (and it seems 
some people rejoice in beholding) our native land, which 

15 used to sit the envied arbiter of all her neighbours, re- 
duced to a servile dependence on their mercy; acquies- 
cing in assurances of friendship which she does not trust ; 
complaining of hostilities which she dares not resent; 
deficient to her allies; lofty to her subjects, and submis- 

20 sive to her enemies; whilst the liberal government of this 
free nation is supported by the hireling sword of German 
boors and vassals; and three millions of the subjects of 
Great Britain are seeking for protection to English privi- 
leges in the arms of Erance! 

25 These circumstances appear to me more like shocking 
prodigies, than natural changes in human affairs. Men 
of firmer minds may see them without staggering or 
astonishment. — Some may think them matters of con- 
gratulation and complimentary addresses; but I trust 

30 your candour will be so indulgent to my weakness, as not 
to have the worse opinion of me for my declining to par- 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 11 

ticipate in this joy; and my rejecting all share whatso- 
ever in such a triumph. I am too old, too stiff in my 
inveterate partialities, to be ready at all the fashionable 
evolutions of opinion. I scarcely know how to adapt my 
mind to the feelings with which the court gazettes mean 5 
to impress the people. It is not instantly that I can be 
brought to rejoice, when I hear of the slaughter and cap- 
tivity of long lists of those names which have been 
familiar to my ears from my infancy, and to rejoice that 
they have fallen under the sword of strangers, whose bar- 10 
barous appellations I scarcely know how to pronounce. 
The glory acquired at the White Plains by Colonel Raille 
has no charms for me; and I fairly acknowledge, that I 
have not yet learned to delight in finding Fort Knip- 
hausen in the heart of the British dominions. 15 

It might be some consolation for the loss of our old 
regards, if our reason were enlightened in proportion as 
our honest prejudices are removed. Wanting feelings for 
the honour of our country, we might then in cold blood 
be brought to think a little of our interests as individual 20 
citizens, and our private conscience as moral agents. 

Indeed our affairs are in a bad condition. I do assure 
those gentlemen who have prayed for war, and have ob- 
tained the blessing they have sought, that they are at this 
instant in very great straits. The abused wealth of this 25 
country continues a little longer to feel its distemper. As 
yet they, and their German allies of twenty hireling 
states, have contended only with the unprepared strength 
of our own infant colonies. But America is not sub- 
dued. Not one unattacked village which was originally 30 
adverse throughout that vast continent, has yet submitted 



18 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

from love or terror. You have the ground you encamp 
on; and you have no more. The cantonments of your 
troops and your dominions are exactly of the same extent. 
You spread devastation, but you do not enlarge the sphere 
5 of authority. 

The events of this war are of so much greater magni- 
tude than those who either wished or feared it, ever looked 
for, that this alone ought to fill every considerate mind 
with anxiety and diffidence. Wise men often tremble at 

lo the very things which fill the thoughtless with security. 
For many reasons I do not choose to expose to public 
view all the particulars of the state in which you stood 
with regard to foreign powers, during the whole course 
of the last year. Whether you are yet wholly out of danger 

15 from them, is more than I know, or than your rulers can 
divine. But even if I were certain of my safety, I could 
not easily forgive those who had brought me into the most 
dreadful perils, because by accidents, unforeseen by them 
or me, I have escaped. 

20 Believe me, gentlemen, the way still before you is intri- 
cate, dark, and full of perplexed and treacherous mazes. 
Those who think they have the clue may lead us out of 
this labyrinth. We may trust them as amply as we think 
proper; but as they have most certainly a call for all the 

25 reason which their stock can furnish, why should we 
think it proper to disturb its operation by inflaming their 
passions? I may be unable to lend an helping hand to 
those who direct the state; but I should be ashamed to 
make myself one of a noisy multitude to halloo and 

30 hearten them intO' doubtful and dangerous courses. A 
conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 19 

blood. He would feel some apprehension at being called 
to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play, 
without any sort of knowledge of the game. It is no ex- 
cuse for presumptuous ignorance, that it is directed by 
insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, 5 
contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, 
is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But 
I cannot conceive any existence under heaven, (which, 
in the depths of its wisdom, tolerates all sorts of things) 
that is more truly odious and disgusting, than an impo- 10 
tent helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military 
skill, without a consciousness of any other qualifica- 
tion for power but his servility to it, bloated with pride 
and arrogance, calling for battles which he is not to fight, 
contending for a violent dominion which he can never 15 
exercise, and satisfied to be himself mean and miserable, 
in order to render others contemptible and wretched. 

If you and I find our talents not of the great and rul- 
ing kind, our conduct, at least, is conformable to our 
faculties. No man's life pays the forfeit of our rashness. 20 
No desolate widow weeps tears of blood over our igno- 
rance. Scrupulous and sober in our well-grounded distrust 
of ourselves, we would keep in the port of peace and 
security; and perhaps in recommending to others some- 
thing of the same diffidence, we should show ourselves 25 
more charitable in their welfare, than injurious to their 
abilities. 

There are many circumstances in the zeal shown for 
civil war, which seem to discover but little of real mag- 
nanimity. The addressers offer their own persons, and 30 
they are satisfied with hiring Germans. They promise 



20 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

their private fortunes, and they mortgage their country. 
They have all the merit of volunteers, without risk of 
person or charge of contribution; and when the unfeeling 
arm of a foreign soldiery pours out their kindred blood 
5 like water, they exult and triumph as if they themselves 
had performed some notable exploit. I am really ashamed 
of the fashionable language which has been held for some 
time past; which, to say the best of it, is full of levity. 
You know that I allude to the general cry against the 

10 cowardice of the Americans, as if we despised them for 
not making the king's soldiery purchase the advantage 
they have obtained, at a dearer rate. It is not, gentlemen, 
it is not to respect the dispensations of Providence, nor to 
provide any decent retreat in the mutability of human 

15 affairs. It leaves no medium between insolent victory 
and infamous defeat. It tends to alienate our minds 
further and further from our natural regards, and to make 
an eternal rent and schism in the British nation. Those 
who do not wish for such a separation, would not dissolve 

20 that cement of reciprocal esteem and regard, which can 
alone bind together the parts of this great fabric. It 
ought to be our wish, as it is our duty, not only to for- 
bear this style of outrage ourselves, but to make every 
one as sensible as we can of the impropriety and unworth- 

25 iness of the tempers which give rise to it, and which de- 
signing men are labouring with such malignant industry 
to diffuse amongst us. It is our business to counteract 
them, if possible; if possible, to awake our natural re- 
gards; and to revive the old partiality to the English 

30 name. Without something of this kind I do not see how 
it is ever practicable really to reconcile with those, whose 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 21 

affection, after all, must be the surest hold of our gov- 
ernment; and which is a thousand times more worth 
to us, than the mercenary zeal of all the circles of 
Germany. 

I can well conceive a country completely overrun, and 5 
miserably wasted, without approaching in the least to set- 
tlement. In my apprehension, as long as English govern- 
ment is attempted to be supported over Englishmen by the 
sword alone, things will thus continue. I anticipate in 
my mind the moment of the final triumph of foreign mill- 10 
tary force. When that hour arrives, (for it may arrive) 
then it is, that all this mass of weakness and violence 
will appear in its full light. If we should be expelled from 
America, the delusion of the partisans of military gov- 
ernment might still continue. They might still feed their 15 
imaginations with the possible good consequences which 
might have attended success. Nobody could prove the 
contrary by facts. But in case the sword should do all 
that the sword can do, the success of their arms and the 
defeat of their policy will be one and the same thing. 20 
You will never see any revenue from America. Some in- 
crease of the means of corruption, without ease of the 
public burthens, is the very best that can happen. Is it 
for this that we are at war; and in such a war? 

As to the difficulties of laying once more the founda- 25 
tions of that government, which, for the sake of conquer- 
ing what was our own, has been voluntarily and wanton- 
ly pulled down by a court faction here, I tremble to look 
at them. Has any of these gentlemen, who are so eager 
to govern all mankind, showed himself possessed of the 30 
first qualification towards government, some knowledge 



22 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

of the object, and of ttie difficulties whicli occur in the 
task they have undertaken ? 

I assure you, that, on the most prosperous issue of your 
arms, you will not be where you stood, when you called 
5 in war to supply the defects of your political establish- 
ment. Nor would any disorder or disobedience to gov- 
ernment which could arise from the most abject conces- 
sion on our part, ever equal those which will be felt, 
after the most triumphant violence. You have got all the 

10 intermediate evils of war into the bargain. 

I think I know America. If I do not, my ignorance is 
incurable, for I have spared no pains to understand it: 
and I do most solemnly assure those of my constituents 
who put any sort of confidence in my industry and integ- 

15 rity, that every thing that has been done there has arisen 
from a total misconception of the object : that our means 
of originally holding America, that our means of recon- 
ciling with it after quarrel, of recovering it after separa- 
tion, of keeping it after victory, did depend, and must 

20 depend in their several stages and periods, upon a total 
renunciation of that unconditional submission, which has 
taken such possession of the minds of violent men. The 
whole of those maxims, upon which we have made and 
continued this war, must be abandoned. Nothing indeed, 

25 (for I would not deceive you) can place us in our former 
situation. That hope must be laid aside. But there is a 
difference between bad and the worst of all. Terms rela- 
tive to the cause of the war ought to be offered by the 
authority of parliament. An arrangement at home prom- 

30 ising some security for them ought to be made. By doing 
this, without the least impairing of our strength, we add 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 23 

to the credit of our moderation, which, in itself, is always 
strength more or less. 

I know many have been taught to think, that modera- 
tion, in a case like this, is a sort of treason ; and that all 
arguments for it are sufficiently answered by railing at 5 
rebels and rebellion, and by charging all the present or 
future miseries, which we may suffer, on the resistance 
of our brethren. But I would wish them, in this grave 
matter, and if peace is not wholly removed from their 
hearts, to consider seriously, first, that to criminate and 10 
recriminate never yet was the road to reconciliation, in 
any difference amongst men. In the next place, it would 
be right to reflect, that the American English (whom they 
may abuse, if they think it honourable to revile the ab- 
sent) can, as things now stand, neither be provoked at our 15 
railing, nor bettered by our instruction. All communica- 
tion is cut off between us, but this we know with cer- 
tainty, that, though we cannot reclaim them, we may 
reform ourselves. If measures of peace are necessary, 
they must begin somewhere; and a conciliatory temper 20 
must precede and prepare every plan of reconciliation. 
Nor do I conceive that we suffer anything by thus regulat- 
ing our own minds. We are not disarmed by being disen- 
cumbered of our passions. Declaiming on rebellion never 
added a bayonet, or a charge of powder, to your military 25 
force ; but I am afraid that it has been the means of tak- 
ing up many muskets against you. 

This outrageous language, which has been encouraged 
and kept alive by every art, has already done incredible 
mischief. For a long time, even amidst the desolations of 30 
war, and the insults of hostile laws daily accumulated on 



24 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

one another, the American leaders seem to have had the 
greatest difficulty in bringing up their people to a declara- 
tion of total independence. But the court gazette accom- 
plished what the abettors of independence had attempted 
5 in vain. When that disingenuous compilation, and 
strange medley of railing and flattery, was adduced, as a 
proof of the united sentiments of the people of Great 
Britain, there was a great change throughout all America. 
The tide of popular affection, which had still set towards 

10 the parent country, began immediately to turn, and to 
flow with great rapidity in a contrary course. Far from 
concealing these wild declarations of enmity, the author 
of the celebrated pamphlet, which prepared the minds of 
the people for independence, insists largely on the multi- 

15 tude and the spirit of these addresses; and he draws an 
argument from them, which (if the fact were as he sup- 
poses) must be irresistible. For I never knew a writer on 
the theory of government so partial to authority as not to 
allow, that the hostile mind of the rulers to their people 

20 did fully Justify a change of government; nor can any 
reason whatever be given, why one people should volun- 
tarily yield any degree of pre-eminence to another, but 
on a supposition of great aflection and benevolence to- 
wards them. Unfortunately your rulers, trusting to other 

25 things, took no notice of this great principle of connexion. 
From the beginning of this affair, they have done all they 
could to alienate your minds from your own kindred; 
and if they could excite hatred enough in one of the 
parties towards the other, they seemed to be of opinion 

30 that they had gone half the way towards reconciling the 
quarrel. 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 25 

^" I know it is said, that your kindness is only alienated on 
account of their resistance; and therefore if the colonies 
surrender at discretion, all sort of regard, and even much 
indulgence, is meant towards them in future. But can 
those who are partisans for continuing a war to enforce 5 
such a surrender be responsible (after all that has passed) 
for such a future use of a power, that is bound by no com- 
pacts, and restrained by no terror ? Will they tell us what 
they call indulgences? Do they not at this instant call 
the present war and all its horrors, a lenient and merciful 10 
proceeding ? 

No conqueror, that I ever heard of, has professed to 
make a cruel, harsh, and insolent use of his conquest. 
No! The man of the most declared pride, scarcely dares 
to trust his own heart with this dreadful secret of am- 15 
bition. But it will appear in its time; and no man, who 
professes to reduce another to the insolent mercy of a 
foreign arm, ever had any sort of good-will towards him. 
The profession of kindness, with that sword in his hand, 
and that demand of surrender, is one of the most provok- 20 
ing acts of his hostility. I shall be told, that all this is 
lenient as against rebellious adversaries. But are the 
leaders of their faction more lenient to those who sub- 
mit? Lord Howe and General Howe have powers, imder 
an act of parliament, to restore to the king's peace and 25 
to free trade any men, or district, which shall submit. 
Is this done? We have been over and over informed by 
the authorised gazette, that the city of New York, and 
the countries of Staten and Long Island have submitted 
voluntarily and cheerfully, and that many are very full 30 
of zeal to the cause of administration. Were they instant- 



26 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

ly restored to trade? Are they yet restored to it? Is not 
the benignity of two commissioners, naturally most hu- 
mane and generous men, some way fettered by instructions, 
equally against their dispositions and the spirit of par- 
5 liamentary faith; when Mr. Tryon, vaunting of the fidel- 
ity of the city in which he is governor, is obliged to apply 
to ministry for leave to protect the king's loyal subjects, 
and to grant to them (not the disputed rights and privi- 
leges of freedom) but the common rights of men, by the 

10 name of graces? Why do not the commissioners restore 
them on the spot ? Were they not named as commissioners 
for that express purpose? But we see well enough to 
what the whole leads. The trade of America is to be 
dealt out in private indulgences and graces; that is, in 

15 jobs to recompense the incendiaries of war. They will be 
informed of the proper time in which to send out their 
merchandise. From a national, the American trade is 
to be turned into a personal monopoly: and one set of 
merchants are to be rewarded for the pretended zeal, of 

20 which another set are the dupes; and thus, between craft 
and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled; and all the 
misconduct, all the calamities of the war are covered 
and continued. 

If I had not lived long enough to be little surprised at 

25 anjrthing, I should have been in some degree astonished 
at the continued rage of several gentlemen, who, not sat- 
isfied with carrying fire and sword into America, are ani- 
mated nearly with the same fury against those neigh- 
bours of theirs, whose only crime it is, that they have 

30 charitably and humanely wished them to entertain more 
reasonable sentiments, and not always to sacrifice their in- 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 27 

terest to their passion. All this rage against unresisting 
dissent convinces me, that, at bottom, they are far from 
satisfied they are in the right. For what is it they would 
have? A war? They certainly have at this moment the 
blessing of something that is very like one; and if the 5 
war they enjoy at present be not sufficiently hot and ex- 
tensive, they may shortly have it as warm and as spread- 
ing as their hearts can desire. Is it the force of the king- 
dom they call for? They have it already; and if they 
choose to fi.ght their battles in their own person, nobody 10 
prevents their setting sail to America in the next trans- 
ports. Do they think, that the service is stinted for want 
of liberal supplies ? Indeed they complain without reason. 
The table of the House of Commons will glut them, let 
their appetite for expense be never so keen. And I assure 15 
them further, that those who think with them in the House 
of Commons are full as easy in the control, as they are lib- 
eral in the vote, of these expenses. If this be not supply 
or confidence sufficient, let them open their own private 
purse strings, and give, from what is left to them, as 20 
largely and with as little care as they think proper. 

Tolerated in their passions, let them learn not to perse- 
cute the moderation of their fellow-citizens. If all the 
world joined them in a full cry against rebellion, and were 
as hotly inflamed against the whole theory and enjoyment 25 
of freedom, as those who are the most factious for servi- 
tude, it could not in my opinion answer any one end what- 
soever in this contest. The leaders of this war could not 
hire (to gratify their friends) one German more than they 
do; or inspire him with less feeling for the persons, or 30 
less yalue for the privileges, of their revolted brethren. 



28 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

If we all adopted their sentiments to a man, their allies, 
the savage Indians, could not be more ferocious than they 
are: they could not murder one more helpless woman or 
child, or with more exquisite refinements of cruelty tor- 
5 ment to death one more of their English flesh and blood, 
than they do already. The public money is given to pur- 
chase this alliance; — and they have their bargain. 

They are continually boasting of unanimity; or calling 
for it. But before this unanimity can be matter either 

10 of wish or congratulation, we ought to be pretty sure, that 
we are engaged in a rational pursuit. Phrensy does not 
become a slighter distemper on account of the number 
of those who may be infected with it. Delusion and weak- 
ness produce not one mischief the less, because they are 

15 universal. I declare, that I cannot discern the least advan- 
tage which could accrue to us, if we were able to persuade 
our colonies that they had not a single friend in Great 
Britain. On the contrary, if the affections and opinions 
of mankind be not exploded as principles of connexion, 

20 I conceive it would be happy for us, if they were taught 
to believe, that there was even a formed American party 
in England, to whom they could always look for support ! 
Happy would it be for us, if, in all tempers, they might 
turn their eyes to the parent state; so that their very tur- 

25 bulence and sedition should find vent in no other place 
than this. I believe there is not a man (except those who 
prefer the interest of some paltry faction to the very being 
of their country) who would not wish that the Americans 
should from time to time carry many points, and even 

30 some of them not quite reasonable, by the aid of any de- 
nomination of men here, rather than they should be driven 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 29 

to seek for protection against the fury of foreign mercen- 
aries, and the waste of savages, in the arms of France. 

When any community is subordinately connected with 
another, the great danger of the connexion is the extreme 
pride and self-complacency of the superior, which in all 5 
matters of controversy will probably decide in its own 
favour. It is a powerful corrective to such a very rational 
cause of fear, if the inferior body can be made to believe, 
that the party inclination, or political views, of several 
in the principal state, will induce them in some degree lo 
to counteract this blind and tyrannical partiality. There 
is no danger that any one acquiring consideration or power 
in the presiding state should carry this leaning to the 
inferior too far. The fault of human nature is not of that 
sort. Power in whatever hands is rarely guilty of too 15 
strict limitations on itself. But one great advantage to 
the support of authority attends such an amicable and 
protecting connexion, that those who have conferred fa- 
vours obtain influence; and from the foresight of future 
events can persuade men, who have received obligations, 20 
sometimes to return them. Thus by the mediation of those 
healing principles, (call them good or evil) troublesome 
discussions are brought to some sort of adjustment; and 
every hot controversy is not a civil war. 

But, if the colonies (to bring the general matter home 25 
to us) could see, that, in Great Britain, the mass of the 
people is melted into its government, and that every dis- 
pute with the ministry must of necessity be always a 
quarrel with the nation ; they can stand no longer in the 
equal and friendly relation of fellow-citizens to the sub- 30 
jects of this kingdom. Humble as this relation may ap- 



30 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

pear to some, when it is once broken, a strong tie is dis- 
solved. Other sort of connexions will be sought. For, 
there are very few in the world, who will not prefer an 
useful ally to an insolent master. 
5 Such discord has been the effect of the unanimity into 
which so many have of late been seduced or bullied, or 
into the appearance of which they have sunk through 
mere despair. They have been told that their dissent 
from violent measures is an encouragement to rebellion. 

10 Men of great presumption and little knowledge will hold 
a language which is contradicted by the whole course of 
history. General rebellions and revolts of a whole people 
never were encouraged, now or at any time. They are 
always provoJced. But if this unheard-of doctrine of the 

15 encouragement of rebellion were true, if it were true 
that an assurance of the friendship of numbers in this 
country towards the colonies could become an encourage- 
ment to them to break off all connexion with it, what is 
the inference? Does anybody seriously maintain, that, 

20 charged with my share of the public councils, I am obliged 
not to resist projects which I think mischievous, lest men 
who suffer should be encouraged to resist ? The very tend- 
ency of such projects to produce rebellion is one of the 
chief reasons against them. Shall that reason not be 

25 given ? Is it then a rule, that no man in this nation shall 
open his mouth in favour of the colonies, shall defend 
their rights, or complain of their sufferings? Or when 
war finally breaks out, no man shall express his desires of 
peace? Has this been the law of our past, or is it to be 

30 the terms of our future connexion? Even looking no 
further than ourselves, can it be true loyalty to any gov- 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 31 

ernment, or true patriotism towards any country, to de- 
grade their solemn councils into servile drawing-rooms, 
to flatter their pride and passions, rather than to enlighten 
their reason, and to prevent them from being cautioned 
against violence lest others should be encouraged to re- 5 
sistance? By such acquiescence great kings and mighty 
nations have been undone ; and if any are at this day in a 
perilous situation from rejecting truth, and listening to 
flattery, it would rather become them to reform the errors 
under which they suffer, than to reproach those who fore- 10 
warned them of their danger. 

But the rebels looked for assistance from this country. 
They did so, in the beginning of this controversy, most 
certainly; and they sought it by earnest supplications to 
government, which dignity rejected, and by a suspension 15 
of commerce, which the wealth of this nation enabled you 
to despise. When they found that neither prayers nor 
menaces had any sort of weight, but that a firm resolution 
was taken to reduce them to unconditional obedience by a 
military force, they came to the last extremity. Despair- 20 
ing of us, they trusted in themselves. Not strong enough 
themselves, they sought succour in France. In proportion 
as all encouragement here lessened, their distance from 
this country increased. The encouragement is over; the 
alienation is complete. 25 

In order to produce this favourite unanimity in delu- 
sion, and to prevent all possibility of a return to our an- 
cient happy concord, arguments for our continuance in 
this course are drawn from the wretched situation itself 
into which we have been betrayed. It is said, that being 30 
at war with the colonies, whatever our sentiments might 



32 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

have been before, all ties between us are now dissolved; 
and all the policy we have left is to strengthen the hands 
of government to reduce them. On the principle of this 
argument, the more mischiefs we suffer from any admin- 
5 istration, the more our trust in it is to be confirmed. 
Let them but once get us into a war, and then their power 
is safe, and an act of oblivion is passed for all their mis- 
conduct. 

But is it really true, that government is always to be 

lo strengthened with the instruments of war, but never fur- 
nished with the means of peace ? In former times, minis- 
ters, I allow, have been sometimes driven by the popular 
voice to assert by arms the national honour against for- 
eign powers. But the wisdom of the nation has been far 

15 more clear, when those ministers have been compelled to 
consult its interests by treaty. We all know that the sense 
of the nation obliged the court of King Charles the Sec- 
ond to abandon the Dutch war; a war next to the present 
the most impolitic which we ever carried on. The good 

20 people of England considered Holland as a sort of depend- 
ency on this kingdom; they dreaded to drive it to the 
protection, or subject it to the power of France, by their 
own inconsiderate hostility. They paid but little respect 
to the court jargon of that day; nor were they inflamed 

25 by the pretended rivalship of the Dutch in trade ; by their 
massacre at Amboyna, acted on the stage to provoke the 
public vengeance ; nor by declamations against the ingrati- 
tude of the United Provinces for the benefits England had 
conferred upon them in their infant state. They were not 

30 moved from their evident interest by all these arts; nor 
was it enough to tell them, they were at war; that they 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 33 

must go through with it; and that the cause of the dis- 
pute was lost in the consequences. The people of England 
were then, as they are now, called upon to make govern- 
ment strong. They thought it a great deal better to make 
it wise and honest. 5 

When I was amongst my constituents at the last sum- 
mer assizes, I remember that men of all descriptions did 
then express a very strong desire for peace, and no slight 
hopes of attaining it from the commission sent out by my 
Lord Howe. And it is not a little remarkable, that, in pro- 10 
portion as every person showed a zeal for the court meas- 
ures, he was then earnest in circulating an opinion of the 
extent of the supposed powers of that commission. When 
I told them that Lord Howe had no powers to treat, or to 
promise satisfaction on any point whatsoever of the con- 15 
troversy, I was hardly credited ; so strong and general was 
the desire of terminating this war by the method of ac- 
commodation. As far as I could discover, this was the 
temper then prevalent through the kingdom. The king's 
forces, it must be observed, had at that time been obliged 20 
to evacuate Boston. The superiority of the former cam- 
paign rested wholly with the colonists. If such powers 
of treaty were to be wished, whilst success was very doubt- 
ful, how came they to be less so, since his Majesty's arms 
have been crowned with many considerable advantages? 25 
Have these successes induced us to alter our mind; as 
thinking the season of victory not the time for treating 
with honour or advantage? Whatever changes have hap- 
pened in the national character, it can scarcely be our 
wish, that terms of accommodation never should be pro- 30 
posed to our enemy, except when they must be attributed 



34 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

solely to our fears. It has happened, let me say unfor- 
tunately, that we read of his Majesty's commission for 
making peace, and his troops evacuating his last town 
in the thirteen colonies, at the same hour and in the same 
5 gazette. It was still more unfortunate, that no commis- 
sion went to America to settle the troubles there, until 
several months after an act had been passed to put the 
colonies out of the protection of this government, and to 
divide their trading property, without a possibility of 

10 restitution, as spoil among the seamen of the navy. The 
most abject submission on the part of the colonies could 
not redeem them. There was no man on that whole con- 
tinent, or within three thousand miles of it, qualified by 
law to follow allegiance with protection, or submission 

15 with pardon. A proceeding of this kind has no example 
in history. Independency, and independency with an en- 
mity (which putting ourselves out of the question would 
be called natural and much provoked) was the inevitable 
consequence. How this came to pass, the nation may be 

20 one day in an humour to inquire. 

All the attempts made this session to give fuller powers 
of peace to the commanders in America, were stifled by 
the fatal confidence of victory, and the wild hopes of un- 
conditional submission. There was a moment favourable 

25 to the king's arms, when if any powers of concession had 
existed, on the other side of the Atlantic, even after all 
our errors, peace in all probability might have been re- 
stored. But calamity is unhappily the usual season of 
reflection; and the pride of men will not often suffer 

30 reason to have any scope until it can be no longer of 
service. 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA, 35 

I have always wished, that as the dispute had its ap- 
parent origin from things done in parliament, and as the 
acts passed there had provoked the war, that the founda- 
tions of peace should be laid in parliament also. I have 
been astonished to find, that those, whose zeal for the 5 
dignity of our body was so hot as to light up the flames 
of civil war, should even publicly declare, that these 
delicate points ought to be wholly left to the crown. 
Poorly as I may be thought affected to the authority of 
parliament, I shall never admit that our constitutional 10 
rights can ever become a matter of ministerial negotia- 
tion. 

I am charged with being an American. If warm affec- 
tion towards those over whom I claim any share of 
authority be a crime, I am guilty of this charge. But I 15 
do assure you (and they who know me publicly and 
privately will bear witness to me) that if ever one 
man lived more zealous than another for the supremacy 
of parliament, and the rights of this imperial crown, it 
was myself. Many others indeed might be more knowing 20 
in the extent of the foundation of these rights. I do not 
pretend to be an antiquary, a lawyer, or qualified for the 
chair of professor in metaphysics. I never ventured to 
put your solid interests upon speculative grounds. My 
having constantly declined to do so has been attributed 25 
to my incapacity for such disquisitions; and I am in- 
clined to believe it is partly the cause. I never shall be 
ashamed to confess, that where I am ignorant I am diffi- 
dent. I am indeed not very solicitous to clear myself of 
this imputed incapacity; because men, even less con- 30 
versant than I am, in this kind of subtleties, and placed 



36 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

in stations, to which I ought not to aspire, have, by the 
mere force of civil discretion, often conducted the affairs 
of great nations with distinguished felicity and glory. 
When I first came into a public trust, I found your 

5 parliament in possession of an unlimited legislative power 
over the colonies. I could not open the statute book 
without seeing the actual exercise of it, more or less, in 
all cases whatsoever. This possession passed with me for 
a title. It does so in all human affairs. No man examines 

10 into the defects of his title to his paternal estate, or to 
his established government. Indeed common sense taught 
me, that a legislative authority, not actually limited 
by the express terms of its foundation, or by its own 
subsequent acts, cannot have its powers parcelled out 

15 by argumentative distinctions, so as to enable us to say, 
that here they can, and there they cannot bind. Nobody 
was so obliging as to produce to me any record of such 
distinctions, by compact or otherwise, either at the suc- 
cessive formation of the several colonies, or during the 

20 existence of any of them. If any gentlemen were able 
to see how one power could be given up, (merely on 
abstract reasoning) without giving up the rest, I can 
only say, that they saw further than I could; nor did I 
ever presume to condemn any one for being clear-sighted, 

25 when I was blind. I praise their penetration and learning ; 
and hope that their practice has been correspondent to 
their theory. 

I had indeed very earnest wishes to keep the whole body 
of this authority perfect and entire as I found it : and to 

30 keep it so, not for our advantage solely; but principally 
for the sake of those, on whose account all just authority 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 37 

exists; I mean the people to be governed. For I thought 
I saw, that many cases might well happen, in which the 
exercise of every power comprehended in the broadest 
idea of legislature, might become, in its time and circum- 
stances, not a little expedient for the peace and union 5 
of the colonies amongst themselves, as well as for their 
perfect harmony with Great Britain. Thinking so, (per- 
haps erroneously) but being honestly of that opinion, 
I was at the same time very sure, that the authority, of 
which I was so jealous, could not under the actual cir- 10 
cumstances of our plantations be at all preserved in any 
of its members, but by the greatest reserve in its applica- 
tion; particularly in those delicate points, in which the 
feelings of mankind are the most irritable. They who 
thought otherwise, have found a few more difficulties in 15 
their work than (I hope) they were thoroughly aware of, 
when they undertook the present business. I must beg 
leave to observe, that it is not only the invidious branch 
of taxation that will be resisted, but that no other given 
part of legislative rights can be exercised, without regard 20 
to the general opinion of those who are to be governed. 
That general opinion is the vehicle, and organ of legisla- 
tive omnipotence. Without this, it may be a theory to 
entertain the mind, but it is nothing in the direction of 
affairs. The completeness of the legislative authority of 25 
parliament over this Tcingdom is not questioned; and yet 
many things indubitably included in the abstract idea of 
that power, and which carry no absolute injustice in 
themselves, yet being contrary to the opinions and feel- 
ings of the people, can as little be exercised, as if parlia- 30 
ment in that case had been possessed of no right at all. 



38 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

I see no abstract reason, whicli can be given, wby the 
same power, which made and repealed the High Commis- 
sion Court and the Star Chamber, might not revive them 
again; and these courts, warned by their former fate, 
5 might possibly exercise their powers with some degree 
of justice. But the madness would be as unquestionable, 
as the competence of that parliament, which should at- 
tempt such things. If anything can be supposed out of 
the power of human legislature, it is religion; I admit, 

10 however, that the established religion of this country 
has been three or four times altered by act of parliament ; 
and therefore that a statute binds even in that case. But 
we may very safely affirm, that, notwithstanding this ap- 
parent onmipotence, it would be now found as impossible 

15 for king and parliament to alter the established religion 
of this country, as it was to King James alone, when he 
attempted to make such an alteration without a parlia- 
ment. In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclina- 
tion; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and 

20 a specific Sanction, to the general sense of the community, 
is the true end of legislature. 

It is so with regard to the exercise of all the powers, 
which our constitution knows in any of its parts, and 
indeed to the substantial existence of any of the parts 

25 themselves. The king's negative to bills is one of the 
most indisputed of the royal prerogatives; and it extends 
to all cases whatsoever. I am far from certain, that if 
several laws, which I know, had fallen under the stroke 
of that sceptre, that the public would have had a very 

30 heavy loss. But it is not the propriety of the exercise 
which is in question. The exercise itself is wisely for- 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 39 

borne. Its repose may be the preservation of its exist- 
ence; and its existence may be the means of saving 
the constitution itself, on an occasion worthy of bringing 
it forth. As the disputants, whose accurate and logical 
reasonings have brought us into our present condition, 5 
think it absurd, that powers or members of any constitu- 
tion should exist, rarely or never to be exercised, I hope 
I shall be excused in mentioning another instance, that is 
material. We know, that the Convocation of the Clergy 
had formerly been called, and sat with nearly as much 10 
regularity to business as parliament itself. It is now 
called for form only. It sits for the purpose of making 
some polite ecclesiastical compliments to the king; and, 
when that grace is said, retires and is heard of no more. 
It is however a part of the constitution, and may be 15 
called out into act and energy, whenever there is occasion ; 
and whenever those, who conjure up that spirit, will 
choose to abide the consequences. It is wise to permit 
its legal existence ; it is much wiser to continue it a legal 
existence only. So truly has prudence (constituted as the 20 
god of this lower world) the entire dominion over every 
exercise of power committed into its hands; and yet I 
have lived to see prudence and conformity to circum- 
stances wholly set at nought in our late controversies, 
and treated as if they were the most contemptible and 25 
irrational of all things. I have heard it a hundred times 
very gravely alleged, that in order to keep power in wind, 
it was necessary, by preference, to exert it in those very 
points in which it was most likely to be resisted, and the 
least likely to be productive of any advantage. 30 

These were the considerations, gentlemen, which led me 



40 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

early to think, that, in the comprehensive dominion which 
the divine Providence had put into our hands, instead of 
troubling our understandings with speculations concern- 
ing the unity of empire, and the identity or distinction 
5 of legislative powers, and inflaming our passions with the 
heat and pride of controversy, it was our duty, in all 
soberness, to conform our government to the character and 
circumstances of the several people who composed this 
mighty and strangely diversified mass. I never was wild 

10 enough to conceive, that one method would serve for the 
whole; that the natives of Hindostan and those of Vir- 
ginia could be ordered in the same manner; or that the 
Cutchery court and the grand jury of Salem could be 
regulated on a similar plan. I was persuaded that gov- 

15 ernment was a practical thing, made for the happiness of 
mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uni- 
formity, to gratify the schemes of visionary politicians. 
Our business was to rule, not to wrangle; and it would 
have been a poor compensation that we had triumphed 

20 in a dispute, whilst we lost an empire. 

If there be one fact in the world perfectly clear, it is 
this : " That the disposition of the people of America is 
wholly averse to any other than a free government;" and 
this is indication enough to any honest statesman, how 

25 he ought to adapt whatever power he finds in his hands to 
their case. If any ask me what a free' government is, I 
answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the 
people think so ; and that they, and not I, are the natural, 
lawful, and competent judges of this matter. If they 

30 practically allow me a greater degree of authority over 
them than is consistent with any correct ideas of perfect 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 



41 



I 



freedom, I ought to thank them for so great a trust, and 
not to endeavour to prove from thence, that they have 
reasoned amiss, and that having gone so far, hy analogy, 
they must hereafter have no enjoyment hut hy my 

pleasure. ^ 

If we had seen this done by any others, we should have 
concluded them far gone in madness. It is melancholy 
as well as ridiculous, to observe the kind of reasonmg 
with which the public has been amused, in order to divert 
our minds from the common sense of our American lo 
policy. There are people, who have split and anatomised 
the doctrine of free government, as if were an abstract 
question concerning metaphysical liberty and necessity; 
and not a matter of moral prudence and natural feeling. 
They have disputed, whether liberty be a positive or a 15 
negative idea; whether it does not consist in being gov- 
erned by laws; without considering what are the laws, 
or who are the makers; whether man has any rights by 
nature; and whether all the property he enjoys be not 
the ahns of his government, and his life itself their favour 20 
and indulgence. Others corrupting religion, as these 
have perverted philosophy, contend, that Christians are 
redeemed into captivity; and the blood of the Saviour of 
mankind has been shed to make them the slaves of a few 
proud and insolent sinners. These shocking extremes pro- 25 
voking to extremes of another kind, speculations are let 
loose as destructive to all authority, as the former are to 
all freedom; and every government is called tyranny and 
usurpation which is not formed on their fancies. In this 
manner the stirrers-up of this contention, not satisfied 30 
with distracting our dependencies and filling them with 



42 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

blood and slaugliter, are corrupting our understandings: 
they are endeavouring to tear up, along with practical 
liberty, all the foundations of human society, all equity 
and Justice, religion and order. 
5 Civil freedom, gentlemen, is not, as many have endeav-x 
oured to persuade you, a thing that lies hid in the depth ' 
of abstruse science. It is a blessing and a benefit, not an ^ 
abstract speculation; and all the just reasoning that can 
be upon it is of so coarse a texture, as perfectly to suit the 

lo ordinary capacities of those who are to enjoy, and of those 
who are to defend it. Far from any resemblance to those 
propositions in geometry and metaphysics, which admit 
no medium, but must be true or false in all their latitude ; 
social and civil freedom, like all other things in common 

15 life, are variously mixed and modified, enjoyed in very 
different degrees, and shaped into an infinite diversity of 
forms, according to the temper and circumstances of every 
community. The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract 
perfection, but its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought 

20 to obtain anywhere. Because extremes, as we all know, 
in every point which relates either to our duties or satis- 
factions in life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoy- 
ment. Liberty too must be limited in order to be pos- 
sessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any 

25 case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the constant 
aim of every wise public council, to find out by cautious 
experiments, and rational, cool endeavours, with how 
little, not how much of this restraint, the community can 
subsist. For liberty is a good to be improved, and not an 

30 evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of 
the first order, but the vital spring and energy of the state 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 

itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is 
liberty in it. //But whether liberty be advantageous or 
not, (for I know it is a fashion to decry the very prin- 
ciple) none will dispute that peace is a blessing; and 
peace must in the course of human affairs be frequently 5 
bought by some indulgence and toleration at least to 
liberty. For as the Sabbath (though of divine institu- 
tion) was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, gov- 
ernment, which can claim no higher origin or authority, 
in its exercise at least, ought to conform to the exigencies lo 
of the time, and the temper and character of the people, 
with whom it is concerned; and not always to attempt 
violently to bend the people to their theories of subjec- 
tion. The bulk of mankind on their part are not exces- 
sively curious concerning any theories, whilst they are 15 
really happy; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted 
state is the propensity of the people to resort to them. 

But when subjects, by a long course of such ill conduct, 
are once thoroughly inflamed, and the state itself vio- 
lently distempered, the people must have some satisfaction 20 
to their feelings more solid than a sophistical speculation 
on law and government. Such was our situation; and 
such a satisfaction was necessary to prevent recourse to 
arms; it was necessary towards laying them down; it 
will be necessary to prevent the taking them up again 25 
and again. Of what nature this satisfaction ought to 
be, I wish it had been the disposition of parliament 
seriously to consider. It was certainly a deliberation 
that called for the exertion of all their wisdom. 

I am, and ever have been, deeply sensible of the diffi- 3° 
culty of reconciling the strong presiding power, that is so 



44 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

useful towards the conservation of a vast, disconnected, 
infinitely diversified empire, with that liberty and safety 
of the provinces, which they must enjoy, (in opinion and 
practice at least) or they will not be provinces at all. I 
5 know, and have long felt, the difficulty of reconciling the 
unwieldy haughtiness of a great ruling nation, habitu- 
ated to command, pampered by enormous wealth, and 
confident from a long course of prosperity and victory, to 
the high spirit of free dependencies, animated with the 

10 first glow and activity of juvenile heat, and assuming to 
themselves, as their birthright, some part of that very 
pride which oppresses them. They who perceive no diffi- 
culty in reconciling these tempers, (which however to 
make peace must some way or other be reconciled) are 

15 much above my capacity, or much below the magnitude 
of the business. Of one thing I am perfectly clear, that 
it is not by deciding the suit, but by compromising the 
difference, that peace can be restored or kept. They who 
would put an end to such quarrels, by declaring roundly 

20 in favour of the whole demands of either party, have 
mistaken, in my humble opinion, the office of a mediator. 
The war is now of full two years' standing; the contro- 
versy of many more. In different periods of the dispute, 
different, methods of reconciliation were to be pursued. 

25 I mean to trouble you with a short state of things at the 
most important of these periods, in order to give you a 
more distinct idea of our policy with regard to this most 
delicate of all objects. The colonies were from the begin- 
ning subject to the legislature of Great Britain, on prin- 

30 ciples which they never examined; and we permitted to 
them many local privileges, without asking how they 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 45 

agreed with that legislative authority. Modes of admin- 
istration were formed in an insensible and very unsys- 
tematic manner. But they gradually adapted themselves 
to the varying condition of things. — What was first a 
single kingdom, stretched into an empire ; and an imperial 5 
superintendency, of some kind or other, became necessary. 
Parliament from a mere representative of the people, 
and a guardian of popular privileges for its own imme- 
diate constituents, grew into a mighty sovereign. Instead 
of being a control on the crown on its own behalf, it com- 10 
municated a sort of strength to the royal authority; 
which was wanted for the conservation of a new object, 
but which could not be safely trusted to the crown alone. 
On the other hand, the colonies, advancing by equal 
steps, and governed by the same necessity, had formed 15 
within themselves, either by royal instruction or royal 
charter, assemblies so exceedingly resembling a parlia- 
ment, in all their forms, functions, and powers, that it 
was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of a 
similar authority. 20 

At the first designation of these assemblies, they were 
probably not intended for anything more, (nor perhaps 
did they think themselves much higher) than the munic- 
ipal corporations within this island, to which some at 
present love to compare them. But nothing in progres- 25 
sion can rest on its original plan. "We may as well think 
of rocking a gi'own man in the cradle of an infant. 
Therefore as the colonies prospered and increased to a 
numerous and mighty people, spreading over a very great 
tract of the globe; it was natural that they should at- 30 
tribute to assemblies, so respectable in their formal 



46 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

constitution, some part of the dignity of the great nations 
which they represented. No longer tied to by-laws, these 
assemblies made acts of all sorts and in all cases whatso- 
ever. They levied money, not for parochial purposes, 
5 but upon regular grants to the crown, following all the 
rules and principles of a parliament to which they ap- 
proached every day more and more nearly. Those who 
think themselves wiser than Providence, and stronger 
than the course of nature, may complain of all this varia- 

10 tion, on the one side or the other, as their several humours 
and prejudices may lead them. But things could not be 
otherwise; and English colonies must be had on these 
terms, or not had at all. In the mean time neither party 
felt any inconvenience from this double legislature, to 

15 which they had been formed by imperceptible habits, 
and old custom, the great support of all the governments 
in the world. Though these two legislatures were some- 
times found perhaps performing the very same functions, 
they did not very grossly or systematically clash. In all 

20 likelihood this arose from mere neglect; possibly from 
the natural operation of things, which, left to themselves, 
generally fall into their proper order. But whatever was 
the cause, it is certain that a regular revenue, by the 
authority of parliament, for the support of civil and 

25 military establishments, seems not to have been thought 
of until the colonies were too proud to submit, too strong 
to be forced, too enlightened not to see all the conse- 
quences which must arise from such a system. 
If ever this scheme of taxation was to be pushed against 

30 the inclinations of the people, it was evident that discus- 
sions must arise, which would let loose all the elements 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 47 

that composed this double constitution; would show how 
much each of their members had departed from its orig- 
inal principles; and would discover contradictions in each 
legislature, as well to its own first principles, as to its 
relation to the other, very difficult if not absolutely im- 5 
possible to be reconciled. 

Therefore at the first fatal opening of this contest, the 
wisest course seemed to be to put an end as soon as pos- 
sible to the immediate causes of the dispute ; and to quiet 
a discussion, not easily settled upon clear principles, 10 
and arising from claims, which pride would permit 
neither party to abandon, by resorting as nearly as pos- 
sible to the old, successful course. A mere repeal of the 
obnoxious tax, with a declaration of the legislative 
authority of this kingdom, was then fully sufficient to 15 
procure peace to both sides. Man is a creature of habit, 
and the first breach being of very short continuance, the 
colonies fell back exactly into their ancient state. The 
congress has used an expression with regard to this paci- 
fication, which appears to me truly significant. After 20 
the repeal of the Stamp Act, " the colonies fell," says this 
assembly, " into their ancient state of unsuspecting con- 
fidence in the mother country." This unsuspecting 
confidence is the true center of gravity amongst mankind, 
about which all the parts are at rest. It is this unsus- 25 
pecting confidence that removes all difficulties, and recon- 
ciles all the contradictions which occur in the complexity 
of all ancient, puzzled, political establishments. Happy 
are the rulers which have the secret of preserving it! 

The whole empire has reason to remember, with 30 
eternal gratitude, the wisdom and temper of that man 



48 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

and his excellent associates, who, to recover this confi- 
dence, formed a plan of pacification in 1766. That plan, 
being built upon the nature of man, and the circum- 
stances and habits of the two countries, and not on any 
5 visionary speculations, perfectly answered its end, as 
long as it was thought proper to adhere to it. Without 
giving a rude shock to the dignity (well or ill under- 
stood) of this parliament, they gave perfect content to 
our dependencies. Had it not been for the mediatorial 

10 spirit and talents of that great man, between such clash- 
ing pretensions and passions, we should then have rushed 
headlong (I know what I say) into the calamities of that 
civil war, in which, by departing from his system, we 
are at length involved; and we should have been precipi- 

15 tated into that war, at a time when circumstances both 
at home and abroad were far, very far, more unfavour- 
able unto us than they were at the breaking out of the 
present troubles. 

I had the happiness of giving my first votes in parlia- 

20 ment for that pacification. I was one of those almost 
unanimous members, who, in the necessary concessions 
of parliament, would as much as possible have preserved 
its authority, and respected its honour. I could not at 
once tear from my heart prejudices which were dear to 

25 me, and which bore a resemblance to virtue. I had then, 
and I have still my partialities. What parliament gave 
up, I wished to be given as of grace, and favour, and 
affection, and not as a restitution of stolen goods. High 
dignity relented as it was soothed; and a benignity from 

30 old acknowledged greatness had its full effect on our 
dependencies. Our unlimited declaration of legislative 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 49 

authority produced not a single murmur. If this unde- 
fined power has become odious since that time, and full 
of horror to the colonies, it is because the unsuspicious 
confidence is lost, and the parental affection, in the bosom 
of whose boundless authority they reposed their privi- 5 
leges, is become estranged and hostile. 

It will be asked, if such was then my opinion of the 
mode of pacification, how I came to be the very person 
who moved, not only for a repeal of all the late coercive 
statutes, but for mutilating, by a positive law, the entire- 10 
ness of the legislative power of parliament, and cutting 
off from it the whole right of taxation? I answer, be- 
cause a different state of things requires a different con- 
duct. When the dispute had gone to these last extremities 
(which no man laboured more to prevent than I did,) 15 
the concessions which had satisfied in the beginning, could 
satisfy no longer; because the violation of tacit faith 
required explicit security. The same cause which has 
introduced all formal compacts and covenants among 
men made it necessary. I mean habits of soreness, jeal- 20 
ousy, and distrust. I parted with it, as with a limb; but 
as a limb to save the body; and I would have parted with 
more, if more had been necessary; anything rather than a 
fruitless, hopeless, unnatural civil war. This mode of 
yielding would, it is said, give way to independency, with- 25 
out a war. I am persuaded from the nature of things, and 
from every information, that it would have had a directly 
contrary effect. But if it had this effect, I confess that 
I should prefer independency without war, to independ- 
ency with it ; and I have so much trust in the inclinations 30 
and prejudices of mankind, and so little in anything else. 



50 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

that I should expect ten times more benefit to this king- 
dom from the affection of America, though under a sep- 
arate establishment, than from her perfect submission to 
the crown and parliament, accompanied with her terror, 
5 disgust, and abhorrence. Bodies tied together by so un- 
natural a bond of union, as mutual hatred, are only- 
connected to their ruin. 

One hundred and ten respectable members of parlia- 
ment voted for that concession. Many not present, when 

10 the motion was made, were of the sentiments of those 
who voted. I knew it would then have made peace. I 
am not without hopes that it would do so at present if 
it were adopted. No benefit, no revenue could be lost 
by it; something might possibly be gained by its conse- 

15 quences. For be fully assured, that, of all the phantoms 
that ever deluded the fond hopes of a credulous world, 
a parliamentary revenue in the colonies is the most per- 
fectly chimerical. Your breaking them to any subjection, 
far from relieving your burthens, (the pretext for this 

20 war,) will never pay that military force which will be 
kept up to the destruction of their liberties and yours. 
I risk nothing in this prophecy. 

Gentlemen, you have my opinions on the present state 
of public affairs. Mean as they may be in themselves, 

25 your partiality has made them of some importance. 
Without troubling myself to inquire whether I am under 
a formal obligation to it, I have a pleasure in accounting 
for my conduct to my constituents. I feel warmly on 
this subject, and I express myself as I feel. If I presume 

30 to blame any public proceeding, I cannot be supposed to 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 61 

be personal. Would to God I could be suspected of it. 
My fault might be greater, but the public calamity would 
be less extensive. If my conduct has not been able to 
make any impression on the warm part of that ancient 
and powerful party, with whose support I was not hon- 5 
cured at my election; on my side, my respect, regard, 
and duty to them is not at all lessened. I owe the 
gentlemen who compose it my most humble service in 
everything. I hope that whenever any of them were 
pleased to command me, that they found me perfectly 10 
equal in my obedience. But flattery and friendship are 
very different things ; and to mislead is not to serve them. 
I cannot purchase the favour of any man by concealing 
from him what I think his ruin. By the favour of my 
fellow-citizens, I am the representative of an honest, 15 
well-ordered, virtuous city; of a people, who preserve 
more of the original English simplicity, and purity of 
manners, than perhaps any other. You possess among 
you several men and magistrates of large and cultivated 
understandings ; fit for any employment in any sphere. , , I 20 
do, to the best of my power, act so as to make myself 
worthy of so honourable a choice. If I were ready, on 
any call of my own vanity or interest, or to answer any 
election purpose, to forsake principles, (whatever they 
are) which I had formed at a mature age, on full reflec- 25 
tion, and which had been confirmed by long experience, 
I should forfeit the only thing which makes you pardon 
so many errors and imperfections in me. Not that I 
think it fit for any one to rely too much on his own un- 
derstanding; or to be filled with a presumption, not 30 



52 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

becoming a Christian man, in his own personal stability 
and rectitude. 

I hope I am far from that vain confidence, which al- 
most always fails in trial. I know my weakness in all 
5 respects, as much at least as any enemy I have; and I 
attempt to take security against it. The only method 
which has ever been found effectual to preserve any man 
against the corruption of nature and example, is an 
habit of life and communication of counsels with the 

10 most virtuous and public-spirited men of the age you live 
in. Such a society cannot be kept without advantage, or 
deserted without shame. For this rule of conduct I may 
be called in reproach a party man; but I am little affected 
with such aspersions. In the way which they call party, 

15 I worship the constitution of your fathers; and I shall 
never blush for my political company. All reverence to 
honour, all idea of what it is, will be lost out of the 
world, before it can be imputed as a fault to any man, 
that he has been closely connected with those incompar- 

20 able persons, living and dead, with whom for eleven years 
I have constantly thought and acted. If I have wandered 
out of the paths of rectitude into those of interested fac- 
tion, it was in company with the Saviles, the Dowdes- 
wells, the Wentworths, the Bentincks; with the Lenoxes, 

25 the Manchesters, the Keppels, the Saunderses; with the 
temperate, permanent, hereditary virtue of the whole 
house of Cavendish; names, among which, some have 
extended your fame and empire in arms, and all have 
fought the battle of your liberties in fields not less 

30 glorious. — These, and many more like these, grafting 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 



53 



public principles on private honour, have redeemed the 
pres 1 age, and would have adorned the most splend.d 
rerifd in'.;ur history. Where could any man „ou 
of his own inability to act alone, and willing to act as 
he onght to do, have arranged himself better? If any 5 
oL thinks this kind of society to be taken up a Jhe 
best method of gratifying low, personal pnde, or ambi 
tious interest, he is mistaken; and he knows nothing of 

''prfein. this connexion, I do not mean to detract in .o 
the slightest degree from others. There are some of 
tose, whom I admire at something of a greater d.ta.ce 
.ith whom I have had the l^^PP^-^ .'"l^ ^''f f ^^^^ 
agree in almost all the particulars, m which I have 
dLred with some successive administrations; and they 15 
are .nch, as it never can be reputable to any govemmen 
0" ckon among its enemies. I hope there are none of 
you orrupted with the doctrine taught by wicked men 
for the worst purposes, and received by the malignant 
credulity of envy and ignorance, which is, that the men 20 
:: act upon the public stage are all aliie; a^^ e.ual y 
corrupt; all influenced by no other views than the sordid 
L of salary and pension. The *-^ /^^/^.^^ 
ricnce to be false. Never expecting to find perfection in 
men and not looking for divine attributes xn crea ed^S 
beings in my commerce with my contemporaries I have 
f oTnd much human virtue. I have seen not a little public 
spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a 
decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and repu- 
tti^ The Se unquestionably produces (whether in a 30 



54 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

greater or less number than former times, I know not) 
daring profligates, and insidious hypocrites. What then? 
Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found 
in the world, because of the mixture of evil that will 
5 always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in cur- 
rency only heightens the value. They, who raise suspi- 
cions on the good on account of the behaviour of ill men, 
are of the party of the latter. The common cant is no 
justification for taking this party. I have been deceived, 

10 say they, by Titius and Mcevius; I have been the dupe of 
this pretender or of that mountebank; and I can trust 
appearances no longer. But my credulity and want of 
discernment cannot, as I conceive, amount to a fair pre- 
sumption against any man's integrity. A conscientious 

15 person would rather doubt his own judgment, than con- 
demn his species. He would say, I have observed without 
attention, or judged upon erroneous maxims; I trusted to 
profession, when I ought to have attended to conduct. 
Such a man will grow wise, not malignant, by his ac- 

20 quaintance with the world. But he that accuses all man- 
kind of corruption, ought to remember that he is sure 
to convict only one. In truth I should much rather 
admit those, whom at any time I have disrelished the 
most, to be patterns of perfection, than seek a consola- 

25 tion to my own unworthiness, in a general communion of 
depravity with all about me. 

That this ill-natured doctrine should be preached by 
the missionaries of a court I do not wonder. It answers 
their purpose. But that it should be heard ^among those 

30 who pretend to be strong assertors of liberty, is not only 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 65 

surprising, but hardly natural. This moral levelling is 
a servile principle. It leads to practical passive obedience 
far better than all the doctrines which the pliant accom- 
modation of theology to power has ever produced. It 
cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible re- 5 
sistance, but even of civil opposition. It disposes men 
to an abject submission, not by opinion, which may be 
shaken by argument or altered by passion, but by the 
strong ties of public and private interest. For if all men 
who act in a public situation are equally selfish, corrupt, lo 
and venal, what reason can be given for desiring any 
sort of change, which, besides the evils which must at- 
tend all changes, can be productive of no possible 
advantage? The active men in the state are true samples 
of the mass. If they are universally depraved, the com- 15 
monwealth itself is not sound. We may amuse ourselves 
with talking as much as we please of the virtue of middle 
or humble life; that is, we may place our confidence in 
the virtue of those who have never been tried. But if 
the persons who are continually emerging out of that 20 
sphere, be no better than those whom birth has placed 
above it, what hopes are there in the remainder of the 
body, which is to furnish the perpetual succession of the 
state? All who have ever written on government are 
unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, lib- 25 
erty cannot long exist. Alid indeed how is it possible? 
when those who are to make the laws, to guard, to en- 
force, or to obey them, are, by a tacit confederacy of 
manners, indisposed to the spirit of all generous and 
noble institutions. 30 



66 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But 
I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate 
degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the 
best in our time; and to have some more correct standard 
5 of judging what that best is, than the transient and 
uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, 
and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of 
such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed to 
ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of 

10 human passions, must join with that society, and cannot 
long be joined, without in some degree assimilating to it. 
Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the 
public stock of honest, manly principle will daily accu- 
mulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinise motives as 

15 long as action is irreproachable. It is enough, (and for 
a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy 
to convicted guilt and declared apostasy. 

This, gentlemen, has been from the beginning the rule 
of my conduct ; and I mean to continue it, as long as such 

20 a body as I have described can by any possibility be 
kept together; for I should think it the most dreadful 
of all offences, not only towards the present generation 
but to all the future, if I were to do anything which 
could make the minutest breach in this great conserva- 

25 tory of free principles. Those who perhaps have the same 
intentions, but are separated by some little political ani- 
mosities, will I hope discern at last, how little conducive 
it is to any rational purpose, to lower its reputation. 
For my part, gentlemen, from much experience, from no 

30 little thinking, and from comparing a great variety of 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 57 

things, I am thoroughly persuaded, that the last hopes 
of preserving the spirit of the English constitution, or 
of reuniting the dissipated members of the English race 
upon a common plan of tranquillity and liberty, does 
entirely depend on their firm and lasting union; and 5 
above all on their keeping themselves from that despair, 
which is so very apt to fall on those, v^hom a violence 
of character and a mixture of ambitious views do not 
support through a long, painful, and unsuccessful 
struggle. lo 

There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the sted- 
fastness of some men has been put to so sore a trial. It 
is not veiy difficult for well-formed minds to abandon 
their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is 
a harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made 15 
unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary 
power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and 
to lose the relish of honest equality. The principles of 
our forefathers become suspected to us, because we 
see them animating the present opposition of our children. 20 
The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom 
appear much more shocking to us than the base vices 
which are generated from the rankness of servitude. Ac- 
cordingly the least resistance to- power appears more 
inexcusable in our eyes than the greatest abuses of 25 
authority. All dread of a standing military force is 
looked upon as a superstitious panic. All shame of call- 
ing in foreigners and savages in a civil contest is worn 
off. We grow indifferent to the consequences inevitable 
to ourselves from the plan of ruling half the empire by 30 



58 LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL 

a mercenary sword. We are taught to believe, that a 
desire of domineering over our countrymen is love to our 
country; that those who hate civil war abet rebellion, 
and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of lenity, 
5 moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those who 
depend on this kingdom, are a sort of treason to the 
state. 

It is impossible that we should remain long in a situa- 
tion, which breeds such notions and dispositions, without 

10 some great alteration in the national character. Those 
ingenuous and feeling minds who are so fortified against 
all other things, and so unarmed to whatever approaches 
in the shape of disgrace, finding these principles, which 
they considered as sure means of honour, to be grown 

15 into disrepute, will retire disheartened and disgusted. 
Those of a more robust make, the bold, able, ambitious 
men, who pay some of their court to power through the 
people, and substitute the voice of transient opinion in 
the place of true glory, will give into the general mode; 

20 and those superior understandings which ought to correct 
vulgar prejudice, will confirm and aggravate its errors. 
Many things have been long operating towards a gradual 
change in our principles. But this American war has 
done more in a very few years, than all the other causes 

25 could have effected in, a century. It is therefore not on 
its own separate account, but because of its attendant 
circumstances, that I consider its continuance, or its end- 
ing in any way but that of an honourable and liberal 
accommodation, as the greatest evils which can befall 

30 us. For that reason I have troubled you with this long 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. 



59 



letter. For that reason I entreat you again and again, 
neither to be persuaded, shamed, or frighted out of the 
principles that have hitherto led so many of you to abhor 
the war, its cause, and its consequences. Let us not be 
amongst the first who renounce the maxims of our fore- 
fathers. 

1 have the honour to he, 
Gentlemen, 
Your most ohedient. 
And faithful humble servant. 



Beaconsfield, EDMUND BUEKE. 

Avril 3, 1777, 

P. S. You may communicate this letter in any man- 
ner you think proper to my constituents. 



NOTES. 



1. Gentlemen. The Letter was addressed to the sheriffs 
of Bristol, because as representatives of the King, by whom 
they were appointed each year, the sheriffs had charge of all 
the elections in the county. John Farr, a " rope maker," 
and John Harris, a " hosier," were sheriffs in 1776-7. Harris 
was again appointed sheriff in 1788, and two years later was 
elected mayor. Farr was elected mayor in 1784. 

1 7. to nine. These statutes were: (1) the closing of 
Boston harbour (14 Geo. III. 19, i. e., the nineteenth act 
of Parliament in the fourteenth year of the reign of George 
III. See Statutes at Large) ; (2) the act for bringing to 
England for trial persons accused of committing murder fh 
the execution of the law, or in suppressing riots and tumults 
in the colonies (14 Geo. III. 39) ; (3) the suspension of the 
charter of Massachusetts (14 Geo. III. 45) ; (4) the Military 
Bill for quartering the soldiers in America (14 Geo. III. 54) ; 
(5) the Quebec Act which extended the boundaries of that 
province to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (14 Geo. III. 
83) ; (6) the act restraining the colonies from trading with 
Great Britain and the West Indies, and from the Newfound- 
land fisheries (15 Geo. III. 10) ; (7) the Prohibitory Act, to 
prohibit all trade and intercourse with the colonies during 
rebellion (16 Geo. III. 5) ; and the two acts spoken of below. 

1 14. our detestation. The sheriffs may have agreed 
with Burke, but the majority of the citizens of Bristol did 
not, for in less than a year they pledged £21,000 to aid the 
government in prosecuting the war, while the friends of the 
colonists could raise only £363. 

61 



62 NOTES. 

2 2. the Englisli on the continent. The Americans. 

See also 5 31, T 28, 20 4, 20 18, 21 8, 23 13, 27 31. 

2 4. wliicli. undermine our own. In An Appeal from 
the New to the Old Whigs, Burke said : " He certainly never 
could and never did wish the colonists to be subdued by arms. 
He v^as fully persuaded, that, if such should be the event, 
they must be held in that subdued state by a great body of 
standing forces, and perhaps of foreign forces. He was 
strongly of opinion that such armies, first victorious over 
Englishmen, in a conflict for English constitutional rights and 
privileges, and afterwards habituated (though in America) 
to keep an English people in a state of abject subjection, would 
prove fatal in the end to the liberties of England itself." 
Burke's Works, IV. 102. 

2 5. the letter of marque. "A bill (17 Geo. III. 7) 
for enabling the admiralty to grant commissions, or letters 
of marque and reprisal, as they are usually called, to the 
owners or captains of private merchant ships, authorising 
them to take and make prize of all vessels with their eifects, 
belonging to any of the inhabitants of the thirteen specified 
revolted American colonies, was passed without debate or 
opposition in the House of Commons, soon after the recess. 
It did not cost much more trouble to the Lords." Annual 
Register, 1777, p. 53. To make war without such permission 
is piracy ; with it, privateering. A declaration of the Con- 
gress of Paris in 1856 abolished privateering. (Selby.) 

2 10. a. partial suspension of tlie Habeas Corpus. 
This act (17 Geo. III. 9) was passed on 17 Feb. 1777 
by a vote of 112 to 33, although the sheriffs of London had 
presented a petition against it on the ground that it was 
taking away the fundamental rights of the people. The full 
text of the act is as follows : 

An act to impower his Majesty to secure and detain Persons 
charged with, or suspected of, the Crime of High Treason, com- 
mitted in any of his Majesty's Colonies or Plantations In America, 
or on the High Seas, or the Crime of Piracy. 

Whereas a Rebellion and War have been openly and traiterously 
levied and carried on in certain of his Majesty's Colonies and Plan- 
tations in Ameriw, and Acts of Treason and Piracy have been 
committed on the High Seas, and upon the Ships and Goods of 
his Majesty's Subjects, and many Persons have been seized and 



NOTES, 63 



taken, who are expressly charged or strongly suspected of such 
Treasons and Felonies, and many more such Persons may be here- 
after so seized and taken: And whereas such Persons have been, 
and may be brought into this Kingdom, and into other Parts of his 
Majesty's Dominions, and it may be inconvenient in many such 
Cases to proceed forthwith to the Trial of such Criminals, and at 
the same Time of evil Example to suffer them to go at large; be 
it therefore enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and 
with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, 
and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the 
Authority of the same, That all and every Person or Persons who 
have been or shall hereafter be seized or taken in the Act of High 
Treason committed in any of his Majesty's Colonies or Plantations 
in America, or on the High Seas, or in the Act of Piracy, or who 
are or shall be charged with or suspected of the Crime of High 
Treason, committed in any of the said Colonies, or on the High 
Seas, or of Piracy, and who have been, or shall be committed, in 
any Part of his Majesty's Dominions, for such Crimes, or any of 
them, or for Suspicion of such Crimes, or any of them, by any 
Magistrate having competent Authority in that Behalf, to the 
Common Gaol, or other Place of Confinement as is hereinafter pro- 
vided for that Purpose, shall and may be thereupon secured and 
detained in safe Custody, without Bail or Mainprize, until the first 
Day of January, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight; 
and that no Judge or Justice of Peace shall bail or try any such 
Person or Persons without Order from his Majesty's most honour- 
able Privy Council, signed by six of the said Privy Council, until 
the said first day of January, one thousand seven hundred and sev- 
enty-eight; any Law, Statute, or Usage, to the contrary in anywise 
notwithstanding. 

II. And whereas it may be necessary to provide for such Pris- 
oners within this Realm some other Places of Confinement besides 
the Common Gaols; be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid. That 
it shall and may be lawful for his Majesty, by Warrant under his 
Sign Manual, to appoint one or more Place or Places of Confine- 
ment within the Realm, for the Custody of such Prisoners; and all 
and every Magistrate and Magistrates, having competent Authority 
in that Behalf, are hereby authorised to commit such Persons as 
aforesaid to such Place or Places of Confinement, so to be appointed, 
instead of the Common Gaol. 

III. Provided always, and be it enacted, that no Offences shall 
be construed to be Piracy within the Meaning of this Act, except 
Acts of Felony committed on the Ships and Goods of his Majesty's 
Subjects by Persons on the High Seas. 

IV. Provided also, and it is hereby declared. That nothing herein 
contained, is intended, or shall be construed to extend to the Case 
of any other Prisoner or Prisoners than such as shall have been 
out of the Realm at the Time or Times of the Offence or Offences 
wherewith he or they shall be charged, or of which he or they 
shall be suspected. 

V. And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid. That 
this Act shall continue and be in Force until the said first Day of 
January, one thousand seven _ hundred and seventy-eight and no 
longer. 

By successive enactments, it was continued to January, 
1783. The amendment referred to in 2 12 is section IV. 
3 9. the order of crimes. A rebel, who attempts to 



64 NOTES. 

overthrow by force the government to which he owes alle- 
giance, may deserve our respect, but a pirate or sea-robber, 
who sails the sea for the robbery and plunder of merchant- 
vessels is an enemy of the whole human race, an object of 
universal detestation. 

3 1 6. corruption o£ blood. A man sentenced to death 
or outlawed for treason or felony was said to have become 
" tainted " or " corrupted," so that he and his descendants lost 
all rights of rank and title ; he could no longer retain possession 
of land which he had held, nor leave it to heirs, nor could his 
descendants inherit from him. 

3 24. Lord Coke. Sir Edward Coke, (1552-1634), was 
Speaker of the House of Commons in 1592, the successful 
rival of Sir Francis Bacon for Attorney-General in 1593, 
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1606, and of the 
King's Bench in 1613. Coke prosecuted the Earl of Essex 
for treason while Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and the Earl 
of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron, for aiding Essex. He 
also prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh for conspiracy in 1603, 
and the Gunpowder Plotters in 1605. His chief works are 
his Reports, and his edition of Littleton's Institutes. " The 
key to his whole life is his veneration for the law, for its 
technicalities as well as for its substance, and the belief that on 
its rigourous maintenance and the following of precedents de- 
pended the liberties of England. Possessed with this one idea 
he exercised a great and beneficial restraint on two of the most 
dangerous and unwise of English Kings." 

3 30. Lord Balmerino, (1688-1746), a Scotch Jacobite, 
had fought in the Rebellion of 1715 for the " Old Pretender," 
but was pardoned. He was especially active in the Rebellion 
of 1745 for the " Young Pretender " and for this was tried 
and beheaded. See Gentleman's Magazine, XVI. 391. 

4 10. new-created offence. By the Prohibitory Bill, 
all ships and goods of the colonists, taken by the British ships 
of war, were forfeited to the captors, " for the encouragement 
of the officers and seamen of his Majesty's ships of war." 

4 28. tlieir construction of that act. Early in Jan- 
uary, 1769, Parliament, by a vote of 169 to 65, sent an 
address to the King, urging him to put down the disturbances 



NOTES. 65 

in Massachusetts caused by the Townshend Act, and to bring 
the offenders to England for trial by authority of the act 
of Henry VIII. (35 Hen. VIII. 2). which had been passed 
in 1543 when England had no colonies. 

6 7. Tyburn. The place of public execution of criminals 
convicted in London. Here, in 1724, Jack Sheppard, the 
highwayman, was executed in the presence of 200,000 people. 
After November, 1788, the executions were transferred to 
Newgate. 

7 28. foreign troops. Unable to obtain a sufficient num- 
ber of recruits from her own territory, Great Britain hired 
about 18,000 Germans, chiefly from the Landgrave of Hesse. 
In addition to the salaries, England paid $35 for each man 
killed, $12 for each man wounded, and a large bounty to the 
German rulers. 

7 30. an excliange of prisoners. As the result of an 
interview on 22 July 1776 between General Washington and 
Paterson, the British adjutant-general under General Howe, 
Congress agreed to exchange prisoners of war : officer for officer 
of equal rank, soldier for soldier, sailor for sailor, and citizen 
for citizen. 

8 3. administration. The ministry or the " govern- 
ment." 

9 2. the late rebellions. The Jacobite Rebellions for 
the " Old Pretender " in 1715 and for the " Young Pretender " in 
1745. See S. R. Gardiner^s Student History of England, 
pp. 705, 739. 

9 24. Oyer and Terminer. A commission formerly 
directed to the King's judges, sergeants, and other persons ^of 
note, empowering them to hear and determine indictments on 
specified offences, such as treasons, felonies, etc., special com- 
missions being granted on occasions of extraordinary dis- 
turbances such as insurrections. 

10 12. tbe common laxr. The common law, or unwrit- 
ten law of England is that law which has come down by 
general custom from time immemorial, as distinguished from 
that law which is the result of statutes or acts passed by a 
legislative body. For instance, at common law, a widow has 
dower, i. e. the right to one-third of her husband's personal 
property and a life-interest in one-third of his real estate. 



66 NOTES. 

11 10. Call of tlie nation. This phrase is probably 
formed by analogy from the *' Call of the House," which is an 
imperative summons sent to every member of Parliament to 
attend v^^hen the sense of the whole House is required. At the 
muster, the names of the members are called over, and defaulters 
reported. 

12 2. the first partial suspension. The first suspen- 
sion of the Habeas Corpus Act was in 1689, when many 
persons were arrested for conspiring against King William ; 
but they were detained only for a few weeks until the court 
could meet to try them. Other conspiracies against the sov- 
ereign led to its suspension in 1696, 1715, 1722, and 1727. 
In 1744 it was suspended for two months because of fear of 
a French invasion, and in 1745 it was suspended during the 
Rebellion of the " Young Pretender." Jeremy Bentham, in 1809, 
said: "As for the Haleas Corpus Act, better the statute 
book were rid of it. Standing or lying as it does, up one day, 
down another, — it serves but to swell the list of sham-securi- 
ties, with which to keep up the delusion, the pages of our law 
books are defiled. When no man has need of it, then it is 
that it stands : comes a time when it might be of use, and then 
it is suspended." Works, III. 435. Dr. Johnson said : " The 
Habeas Corpus is the single advantage which our government 
has over that of other countries." BoswelVs Johnson, II. 73. 

12 8. even negro slaves. In 1772, Lord Mansfield 
issued a writ of Haheas Corpus to release James Sommersett, 
a negro slave, who had accompanied his master from Virginia 
to London, where he had attempted to flee from his master and 
had been captured, and confined on a vessel bound for Jamaica. 
After an important trial, he was declared free. See HowelW 
State Trials, vol. 20, p. 1, No. 548. 

12 20. three unofPending provinces. New York, New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania were less desirous than the other 
colonies of engaging in war with England. 

13 5. I do not speak o£ my opposition. Burke was 
always modest. See 35 27, 36 24, 37 8, 44 21, 51 3, 52 3, 
53 3, 54 12, 58 30. 

13 25. my usual strict attendance. See Introduc- 
tion, p. XXIX. There is no record of Burke's attending the ses- 



NOTES. 67 

sions of the House from 6 Nov. 1776 until 16 April 1777. 
Burke wrote to the Marquis of Rockingham: 

By the conversation of some friends, it seemed as if they were 
willing to fall in with this design, because it promised to emanci- 
pate them from the servitude of irksome business, and to afford 
them an opportunity of retiring to ease and tranquillity. If that be 
their object in the secession and in the addresses proposed, there 
surely never were means worse chosen to gain their end; and if this 
be any part of their project, it were a thousand times better it were 
never undertaken. ... If your lordship's friends do not go to 
this business with their whole hearts, if they do not feel them- 
selves uneasy without it, if they do not undertake it with a certain 
degree of zeal, and even with warmth and indignation, it had bet- 
ter be removed wholly out of our thoughts. A measure of less 
strength and more in the beaten circle of affairs, if supported 
with spirit and Industry, would be on all accounts infinitely more 
eligible. Works, VI. 155. 

This secession was harshly criticised even by Burke's own 
party because it was not general and because no public ad- 
dresses or remonstrances had been made, Burke however had 
prepared An Address to the King and An Address to the 
British Colonists in North America, which were not published 
during his life. Works, VI. 161-196. The author of one of 
the replies to the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol says : 

The conduct of Mr. Burke was unworthy an orator, unworthy a 
patriot, unworthy a man: Not immediately, because he did not op- 
pose the bill; but because, never having resisted the bill with the 
faintest finger of opposition, he descended so very low as to write 
against it, after all opposition was vain and frivolous; after it had 
passed into an established, perfect act of Parliament. What shall 
we call the behaviour of that man who basely deserts his post m 
the constitution, who refuses to do his duty in the time of (what he 
calls) danger, who leaves every thing to the mercy of (those whom 
he calls) enemies; and, when (what he calls) the tyranny is per- 
haps irreparably established, sits down to describe to a parcel of 
Bristol electors (what he calls) their distressful situaUon." 

13 26. those gentlemen. Fox, Dunning, and others. 

14 21. Mr. Hume. David Hume, (1711-1776), a philoso- 
pher and historian, was the author of the Treatise of Human 
Nature, the Enquiry Concerning Principles of Morals, and the 
History of England. He endeavoured to introduce the experi- 
mental method of reasoning into moral subjects. 

15 30. the bond of charity. " Put on charity, which is 
the bond of perfectness." Colossians, III. 14. 

16 21. the hireling sword of German boors. "The 



68 NOTES. 

conduct of England in hiring German mercenaries to subdue 
the essentially English population beyond the Atlantic, made 
reconciliation hopeless and the Declaration of Independence 
inevitable. It was idle for the Americans to have any further 
scruples about calling in foreigners to assist them vt^hen Eng- 
land had herself set the example. It was necessary that they 
should do so if they were successfully to resist the powerful 
reinforcement which was thus brought against them." Lecky's 
History of England in 18th Century, IV. 244. See also 
note on 29 2, Notice how frequently Burke refers to the 
Germans in terms of disrespect: 17 27, 20 4, 21 3, 27 29. 

16 29. complimentary addresses. In the summer of 
1775 many loyal addresses from such communities as Man- 
chester and Dublin, were presented, calling upon the Crown 
to suppress the rebels and reflecting with severity upon their 
aiders and abettors in the British Parliament. In the Address 
to the British Colonists in North America, Burke said : " We 
admit, indeed, that violent addresses have been procured with 
uncommon pains by wicked and designing men, purporting to 
be the genuine voice of the whole people of England, — that 
they have been published by authority here, and made known 
to you by proclamations, in order, by despair and resentment, 
incurably to poison your minds against the origin of your 
race, and to render all cordial reconciliation between us utterly 
impracticable. . . . We are persuaded that even many of 
those who unadvisedly have put their hands to such intemperate 
and inflammatory addresses have not at all apprehended to 
what such proceedings naturally lead, and would sooner die 
than afford them the least countenance, if they were sensible of 
their fatal effects on the union and liberty of the empire." 
Works, VI. 184, 185. Burke was especially indignant at 
the address from the University of Oxford. He declared that 
" the heads of an University ought by no means to instil polit- 
ical principles into the minds of those [the students] who were 
not suflSciently matured, who knew too little of the world to 
be able to judge of their propriety, and to distinguish between 
sound policy and destructive expedients. Every man must feel 
the violent error of such conduct ; he had himself a son at the 
University, and he could not approve of that son's being told 



NOTES. 69 

by grave men that his father was an abettor of rebels." 
Parliamentary Debates, xviii. 854. , 

17 5. the court gazettes. The official publication of the 
government, issued twice a week, containing lists of government 
appointments and promotions, names of bankrupts, and other 
public notices. See also 24 3, 25 28. 

17 12. the White Plains. Colonel Raille, or Rahl, or 
Rail, commanded a regiment of Hessians at the Battle of White 
Plains, 28 Oct. 1776. As a reward for this, he received a 
brigade with headquarters at Trenton. Owing to his careless- 
ness and conceit, Raille lost his life and his regiment sur- 
rendered at the Battle of Trenton, 26 Dec. 1776. 

17 14. Fort Kniphausen. Baron Wilhelm von Knyp- 
hausen was Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief of the 
Hessians, and on 16 Nov. 1776 he received the surrender of 
Fort Washington, which was then renamed after him. 2,600 
Americans surrendered, and 149 had been killed ; the English 
loss was 500 and the German 350. " This capture of the garri- 
son of Fort Washington was one of the most crushing blows 
that befell the American arms during the whole course of the 
war. Washington's campaign seemed now likely to be converted 
into a mere flight, and a terrible gloom overspread the whole 
country." Fiske's American Revolution, I. 221. It necessitated 
Washington's retreat through New Jersey to Pennsylvania. 

18 13. xrith regard to foreign powers. The Annual 
Register, 1776, p. ♦ 182, says : " France and Spain have opened 
their ports, with the greatest apparent friendship to the Amer- 
icans, and treat them in every respect as an independent peo- 
ple. The remonstrances of the British ministers have availed 
but little. . . . The American privateers have been openly 
received, protected, and cherished, and the rich prizes they 
have taken from the British merchants, rather publicly sold in 
the French ports, both in Europe and the colonies. Artillery 
and military stores of all kinds have been likewise sent. 
. . . In a word, all the nations who possess colonies in Am- 
erica, were eager to partake of the new and unexpected com- 
merce which was now opened ; and all, excepting the Portu- 
guese, who, much against their inclination, have been restrained 
through our influence at that court, still continue most sedu- 
lously to profit of the opportunity." 



70 NOTES. 

18 25. their stock. In Reflections on the Revolution in 
France, Burke says : " We are afraid to put men to live and 
trade each on his own stock of reason ; because we suspect that 
the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would 
do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of 
nations and of ages." Works, III. 346. 

19 30. tlie addressers. Those who present complimen- 
tary addresses to the King in praise and support of his policy. 
See note on 16 29. 

20 10. the cowardice of tlie Americans. On 16 May, 
1775 (one month after the battle of Concord, one month before 
the battle of Bunker Hill), in a debate in the House of Com- 
mons, Lord Sandwich said : " Suppose the colonies do abound 
in men, what does that signify? they are raw, undisciplined, 
cowardly men. I wish instead of 40 or 50,000 of these brave 
fellows, they would produce in the field at least 200,000, the 
more the better, the easier would be the conquest; if they did 
not run away, they would starve themselves into compliance 
with our measures. . . . The very sound of a cannon 
would carry them off ... as fast as their feet could 
carry them." Later he refers to them as " egregious cowards." 
Parliamentary Delates, XVIII. 446. 

21 21. any revenue from America. The Townshend 
duties of 1767 yielded a net revenue of £295 for the first year, 
while the extraordinary military expenses in the colonies for 
the same period were £170,000. See EildretJi's History of 
United States, II. 553. 

24 3. the conrt gazette. The gazette of 23 August 1775 
contained a proclamation for suppressing rebellion and sedition : 

That, whereas many subjects in divers parts of the American 
colonies have at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion; 
and whereas there is reason to apprehend that such rebellion hath 
been much promoted by the traitorous correspondence, counsels, and 
comfort, of divers wicked and desperate persons within this realm; 
to the end, therefore, that none may through ignorance neglect 
or violate their duty, it is declared, that not only all officers, civil 
and military, are obliged to exert their utmost endeavours to sup- 
press such rebellion, and bring the traitors to justice, but that every 
subject within this realm, and the dominions thereunto belonging, 
are bound by law to be aiding and assisting in the suppression of 
the same, and in disclosing all traitorous conspiracies and attempts 
against the King, his Crown, and dignity. And all such subjects 
are charged to transmit to one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries 



NOTES. 71 

of state, or other proper officer, due and full information of all per- 
sons who shall in any manner be found aiding- and abetting the 
persons now in open arms and rebellion against Government, etc. 
Gentleman's Magazine, XLV. 405. 

24 13. tlie celebrated pampMet. " In January, 1776, 
Thomas Paine published his pamphlet, Common Sense, on the 
suggestion of Benjamin Rush, and with the approval of Frank- 
lin and of Samuel Adams." It contained " a sensible and strik- 
ing statement of the practical state of the case between Great 
Britain and the colonies. The reasons were shrewdly and 
vividly set forth for looking upon reconciliation as hopeless, 
and for seizing the present moment to declare to the world 
what the logic of events was already fast making an accom- 
plished fact." Fishers American Revolution, I. 174. In one 
place Paine said : " Neither can ye reconcile Britain and 
America. The last cord now is broken ; the people of England 
are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which 
Nature cannot forgive — she would cease to be Nature if she 
did." More than 120,000 copies of Common Sense were sold 
in three months. Later, during the war, Paine wrote many 
pamphlets, called The Crises, to keep up the spirits of the 
colonists. The boast was made that Paine's pen had been as 
efficient as Washington's sword. Paine, (1737-1809), was an 
Englishman by birth and had come to America on the advice 
of Franklin in 1774. After serving in the Continental army 
and in minor positions in the government, he went to France 
in 1790, where he took up the cause of the French Revolution- 
ists with as much zeal as he had shown for the American 
colonists. He wrote the Rights of Man, a reply to Burke's 
Reflections on the Revolution in France, and the Age of Reason. 

25 24. Liord Howe and General Howe. Richard Earl 
Howe, (1726-1799), and his brother. Sir William Howe, (1729- 
1814), were on 6 May 1776 appointed commissioners of peace 
to the colonies, according to a clause of the Prohibitory Bill. 
Lord Howe first attempted to communicate with Washington, 
but Washington refused to receive the letter because it was 
addressed to him as a private citizen, without his official titles. 
" Lord Howe next inclosed his declaration in a circular letter 
addressed to the royal governors of the middle and southern 



72 NOTES. 

provinces; but as most of these dignitaries were either in jail 
or on board the British fleet, not much was to be expected 
from such a mode of publication. The precious document was 
captured and sent to Congress, which derisively published it 
for the amusement and instruction of the people. It was every- 
where greeted with jeers. . . . The only serious effect | 
produced was the weakening of the loyalist party. Many who 
had thus far been held back by the hope that Lord Howe's 
intercession might settle all the difficulties now came forward 
as warm supporters of independence as soon as it became ap- 
parent that the king had really nothing to offer." Fiske's 
American Revolution, I. 204. They did not have the power 
to make any agreement with the colonists upon the subjects 
in dispute. Practically their only power was to grant pardons 
to colonists who asked for them, as many did in the disastrous 
fall and winter of 1776. 

26 5. Mr. Tryon. William Tryon, (1725-1788), as gover- 
nor of North Carolina in 1771 defeated the " Regulators," who 
had rebelled against the excessive taxes. For this he was pro- 
moted to be governor of New York. Here he made a great deal 
of money in buying land for foreign noblemen ; in one summer 
his commissions amounted to £22,000. From October, 1775, to 
September, 1776, to avoid being captured by the colonists, he 
lived on board British vessels in New York harbour. In June, 
1779, he led a plundering expedition into Connecticut and de- 
stroyed the library of Yale College. 

26 13. The trade of America. "A clause in the late 
prohibitory act, which enabled the admiralty to grant licences 
to vessels for conveying stores and provisions to the forces upon 
the American service, had been made use of to countenance a 
trade in individuals who were favoured, by which, it was said, 
that a monopoly was formed, and the American trade was trans- 
ferred from the ancient merchants, and known traders, to a few 
obscure persons of no account or condition ; and an illicit com- 
merce established under the sanction of that bill, which was 
utterly subversive of one of its principal apparent objects." 
Annual Register, 1776, p. 142*, (quoted by Selby). 

27 17. as easy in the control. " Those who supported 
the American policy of the government not only supplied them 



NOTES. 73 

with large sums of money, but left them free to expend it as 
they pleased. The House of Commons ought to see that money 
voted for a certain purpose is properly expended. Frequent 
complamts were made by the Opposition of the neglect of the 
government to present proper accounts to the House." (Selby.) 

28 2. the savage Indians. Both the colonists and the 
English had employed Indians as allies, but the great majority 
of the Indians joined the English army because the English 
government had protected them against the rapacity and vio- 
lence of the colonists. In May, 1776, the Congress resolved 
that "it is highly expedient to engage the Indians in the 
service of the United Colonies;" and 'n July Washington had 
written to the General Court of Massachusetts, begging them 
to enlist 500 or 600 Indians for his own army. One year 
later General Burgoyne employed a number of Indians, but 
warned them not to be cruel. On 6 Feb. 1778 Burke spoke in 
the House of Commons of their cruelty and Burgoyne's inef- 
fectual warning, saying : " Let us state this Christian exhorta- 
tion and Christian injunction by a more family picture. Sup- 
pose there was a riot on Tower Hill, what would the Keeper of 
his Majesty's Lions do? Would he not fling open the dens of the 
wild beasts, and then address them thus? ' My gentle lions, my 
humane bears, my sentimental wolves, >my tender-hearted 
hyenas, go forth; but I exhort you, as ye are Christians and 
members of a civilised society, to take care not to hurt man, 
woman, or child.' " Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Mason : 
*' I wish I could give you an idea_ of that superlative oration. 
He was pressed to print it, but says he has not time during the 
session. . . . Governor Johnstone said he rejoiced there 
were no strangers in the gallery, as Burke's speech would have 
excited them to tear the ministers to pieces as they went out 
of the House; the ministers are much more afraid of losing 
their places." Letters of Horace Walpole, VII. 29-30. 

28 8. boasting of unanimity. At the opening of Par- 
liament, 31 Oct. 1776, the King said, after announcing the 
open rebellion of the American colonies : " One great advantage, 
however, will be derived from the object of the rebels being 
openly avowed, and clearly understood ; we shall have unanimity 
It home, founded on the general conviction of the justice and 



74 NOTES. 

necessity of our measures." The English people were far 
from unanimous in support of the war. " The House of Com- 
mons, at the last, with the warm and very general approbation 
of the country, put a stop to hostilities, and recognised the in- 
dependence of America. The British nation had been tried 
in the fire before then, and has been tried since ; and it has 
never been the national custom to back out of a just quarrel 
for no other reason than because Britain, at a given moment, 
was getting the worst of it. In 1782 our people solemnly and 
deliberately abandoned the attempt to reconquer America on 
the ground that it was both wrong and foolish ; and that fact, 
to the mind of everyone who holds the British character in 
esteem, affords an irresistible proof that a very large section 
of the people must all along have been fully persuaded that the 
coercion of our colonists by arms was neither wise nor 
righteous." TrevelyarCs American Revolution, Part II. Vol. II. 
164-179. See also 31 26, 

28 21. a formed American party. In the Address to 
the British Colonists, Burke said : *' Do not think that the 
whole, or even the uninfluenced majority, of Englishmen in 
this island are enemies to their own blood on the American 
continent. Much delusion has been practised, much corrupt 
influence treacherously employed. But still a large, and we 
trust the largest and soundest, part of this kingdom perseveres 
in the most perfect unity of sentiments, principles, and affec- 
tions with you." Works, VI. 184. 

29 2. in the arms of France. When the English called 
in the aid of German mercenaries, the colonies determined to 
seek foreign aid also. This was found in France, England's 
old enemy, who desired to avenge herself for the loss of Canada. 
In the fall of 1776, Congress sent Benjamin Franklin and two 
other commissioners to France, who induced her to contribute 
about $500,000 and many military supplies to the colonies. 
Later many Frenchmen, such as the young Marquis of Lafay- 
ette, came to America as volunteers. In the spring of 1778, the 
French made a treaty with Congress, " to acknowledge and sup- 
port her independence, and to seek no advantage for themselves 
except a participation in American commerce and "-' "^ great 
political end of severing the colonies from the Briti - cmpir-*. 



NOTES. 76 

The sole condition exacted was that the Americans should make 
no peace with England which did not involve a recognition of 
their independence." Lecky, IV. 434. 

30 12. General rebellions. In Thoughts on the Cause 
of the Present Discontents, Burke says : " I am not one of 
those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They 
have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other coun- 
tries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between 
them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par 
in favour of the people. . . . When popular discontents 
have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported, 
that there has been generally something found amiss in the 
constitution, or in the conduct of government. The people have 
no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, 
and not their crime. But with the governing part of the state, 
it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as 
well as by mistake." Burke's Works, I. 440. Burke seemed 
to forget this truth a few years later, when he came to deal 
with the French Revolution. (Perry.) 

30 15. tlie encouragement of rebellion. See note on 
24 3 and 16 29. 

31 14. earnest supplications, etc. In 1765 the Stamp 
Act Congress presented a petition to Parliament. In October, 
1774, the Continental Congress presented a petition to the 
King, and one year later a second petition, full of earnest 
supplications : 

We beseech your Majesty to direct some mode by which the 
united applications of your faithful colonists to the throne, in pur- 
suance of their common councils, may be improved into a happy 
and permanent reconciliation; and that, in the meantime, measures 
may be taken for preventing the further destruction of the lives 
of your Majesty's subjects, and that such statutes as more imme- 
diately distress any of your Majesty's colonies may be repealed. 

Commerce was suspended by the non-importation agreements 
of 1768, which in one year reduced the imports from £2,378,000 
to £1,634,000, and by the resolution of Congress not to import 
anything from Great Britain after 1. Dec. 1774. 

32 12. driven by the popular voice. In 1739 Walpole 
was fo»'"*>'i to yield to the popular demand for war with Spain. 

32 t_,(4 the Dutch war. In 1664 England had gone to 



76 NOTES. 

war with Holland for violation of commercial agreements. At 
first the Dutch were successful, aided by the Plague of 1665 
and the Great Fire of 1666. The growing power of France led 
to the ending of the war, and the formation of the Triple Al- 
liance of England, Holland, and Sweden. But in 1672 England 
and France both attacked Holland, which was saved only by the 
leadership of William, Prince of Orange, afterwards William 
III. of England. Charles II. made peace in 1674, chiefly be- 
cause the people had begun to suspect that he was a Roman 
Catholic, and because Holland was looked upon as the strong- 
hold of Protestantism. See J. R. Oreen's Short History of 
England, chap. ix. 

32 26. massacre at Amboyna. In 1673, with the avowed 
intention of exasperating the nation against the Dutch, Dryden 
wrote a play on the massacre at Amboyna, a small island 
of the East Indies, where in 1622 ten English traders had 
been tortured to death by the Dutch garrison. 

33 6. the last summer assizes. Assizes are the sessions 
of court held in each county of England, twice a year for the 
trial of civil cases and four times for criminal cases. Burke 
visited his friend Richard Champion in Bristol on August 22 
and 23, 1776. 

33 21, to evacuate Boston. On the night of 4 March 
1776, under cover of cannonading, Washington captured Dor- 
chester Heights, overlooking Boston. This forced General 
Howe to remove his 8,000 troops from Boston on 17 March 
and to sail for Halifax. " In taking possession of the town, 
Washington captured more than two hundred serviceable can- 
non, ten times more powder and ball than his army had ever 
seen before, and an immense quantity of muskets, gun-carriages, 
and military stores of every sort. Thus was New England set 
free by a single brilliant stroke, with very slight injury to 
private property, and with a total loss of not more than twenty 
lives." Fiske's American Revolution, I. 172. 

34 4. in the same gazette. In the fall of 1776, Burke 
prepared an amendment to the address of the House of Com- 
mons to the King, but it was never presented. In it he said : 

The commissioners sent into America for the pretended purpose 
of m^aking peace, were furnished with no other legal powers but 



NOTES. TT 



that of giving' or withholding pardons at their pleasure, and for re- 
laxing the severities of a single penal act of Parliament, leaving 
the whole foundation of this unhappy controversy as it stood in the 
beginning. ... In addition to this neglect, solely owing to the 
representation of his ministers, in direct violation of public faith 
held out from the throne itself, when, in the beginning of last session, 
his Majesty in his gracious speech to both Houses of Parliament, 
declared his resolution of sending out commissioners for the pur- 
pose therein expressed, as speedily as possible, no such commission- 
ers were sent until near seven months afterwards, and until the 
nation was alarmed by the evacuation of the only town (Boston) 
then held for his Majesty in the thirteen united colonies. By this 
intentional delay, acts of the most critical nature, the effect of 
which must as much depend on the power of immediately relaxing 
them on submission, as in enforcing them in obedience, had only 
an operation to inflame and exasperate. But if any colony, town, 
or place, had been induced to submit, by the operation of the ter- 
rors of these acts, there wei-e none on the place of power to restore 
the people so submitting to the common rights of subjection. The 
inhabitants of the colonies, therefore, apprised that they were put 
out of the protection of government, and seeing no means provided 
for their entering into it, were furnished with reasons but too 
colourable, for breaking off their dependency on the crown of this 
Kingdom. Burke's Correspondence, II. 123. 

34 7. several xuontlis after an act. The Prohibitory 
Bill was approved by the King on 22 Dec. 1775, but Lord 
Howe and General Howe were not appointed commissioners 
until 6 May, 1776. 

34 24. There "was a moment. After the capture of New 
York by General Howe on 15 Sept. 1776. Little was done for 
two months until Fort Washington was taken on 16 November. 

35 24. upon speculative grounds. In his speech on 
American Taxation, Burke said : " I am not here going into the 
distinctions of rights, not attempting to mark their boundaries. 
I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions ; I hate the 
very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently 
stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will 
die along with it." Worhs, II. 73. 

36 29. this authority perfect. Although Burke had 
voted to repeal the Stamp Act, he had voted in favour of the 
Declaratory Act (6 Geo. III. 12) which declared: 

The colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and 
of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon, the 
innperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britian; and the 
King's Majest3^ by and with the advice and consent of the Lords 
spiritual and temporal, and Commons of Great Britain, in Parlia- 
ment assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power 
and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and 



78 NOTES. 

validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of 
the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever. 

38 2. the High Commission Court, and tlie Star 
Chamber. In 1583, Queen Elizabeth, by the authority of the 
Act of Supremacy, appointed the High Commission Court to 
punish all violations of laws concerning religion, especially 
among the Puritans. It gradually usurped almost despotic 
powers of imposing fines and imprisonments. The Court of 
Star Chamber (so-called because it met in the Star Chamber 
of Westminster) was formally constituted by Henry VII. in 
1487. Its jurisdiction extended legally over riots, perjury, mis- 
behaviour of sheriffs, and other notorious misdemeanours, con- 
trary to the law of the land. This was afterwards stretched 
" to the asserting of all proclamations, and orders of state ; to 
the vindicating of illegal commissions, and grants of monopolies ; 
holding for honourable that which pleased, and for just that 
which profited, and becoming both a court of law to determine 
civil rights, and a court of revenue to enrich the treasury ; the 
council table by proclamations enjoining to the people that 
which was not enjoined by the laws, and prohibiting that which 
was not prohibited ; and the Star-Chamber, which consisted of 
the same persons in different rooms, censuring the breach and 
disobedience to those proclamations by very great fines, impris- 
onments, and corporal severities ; so that any disrespect to any 
acts of state, or to the persons of statesmen, was in no time more 
penal, and the foundations of right never more in danger to be 
destroyed." See Blackstone's Commentaries, IV. 266. Both 
courts were abolished by the Long Parliament in 1641 (16 Car. 
I. 10) " to the general joy of the whole nation." 

38 10. the established religion. In 1535, the Act of 
Supremacy declared the King, and not the Pope, the supreme 
head of the Church of England. The mode of worship was 
altered by the Six Articles in 1539 and by the Act of Uniformity 
in 1549. Roman Catholicism was restored by Mary in 1553. 
But in 1559 Elizabeth declared the Church of England inde- 
pendent, and four years later the Thirty-Nine Articles were 
adopted as the fundamental doctrines of the English Church. 
In 1687, James II. made an unsuccessful attempt to restore 
Roman Catholicism by a Declaration of Indulgence, which sus- 



NOTES. 79 

pended all laws against Roman Catholics and Dissenters alike 
and gave permission to both to worship publicly. 

38 i8. to follow, not to force. " In all bodies, those 
who will lead must also, in a considerable degree, follow. 
They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and 
disposition of those whom they wish to conduct." Reflections 
on the Revolution in France, Burke's Works, III. 284. 

38 25. the king's negative to bills. Three centuries 
ago English sovereigns frequently exercised their right of veto- 
ing acts which both Houses of Parliament had passed; Queen 
Elizabeth vetoed 48 of the 91 acts presented to her during one 
session. But the right has not been exercised since 1708 when 
Queen Anne vetoed the act for settling the militia of Scotland. 
See Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1903. In fact, Walter Bagehot, 
in his essay on the English Constitution, says : " Queen Victoria 
must sign her own death-warrant, if both Houses present it for 
her signature." In England the sovereign's veto abolishes the 
act, but in the United States, an act may be made a law, despite 
the President's veto, by a two-thirds vote of Congress. 

39 9. the Convocation of the Clergy. Formerly the 
affairs of the Church were controlled by the Convocations of 
Canterbury and of York. The more important, that of Canter- 
bury, was modelled on the Houses of Parliament, with an up- 
per house of 22 bishops, and a lower house of 143 clergymen. 
In 1531 it granted £100,000 to Henry VIII., who, in turn, 
gave free pardon to all clergymen for spiritual offences. It 
approved the Act of Supremacy and confirmed the Articles of 
Faith. Until 1665, clergymen were exempt from all taxation, 
except that imposed by the Convocation. From 1717 to 1852 
the Convocations were not permitted to meet even for discussion ; 
but since then they have met in annual sessions, which how- 
ever are of purely domestic interest, for their conclusions have 
no authority save in foro conscientice. 

39 20. prudence. In An Appeal from the "New to the Old 
Whigs, Burke said : " Nothing universally can be rationally 
affirmed on any moral or any political subject. Pure meta- 
physical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The 
lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. 
They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of ex- 



80 NOTES. 

ceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and 
modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the 
rules of prudence. Prudence is not only the first in rank of 
the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the 
regulator, the standard of them all. Metaphysics cannot live 
without definition; but Prudence is cautious how she defines." 
Works, IV. 81. 

40 2. the divine Providence. In his speech on Mr. 
Fox's East India Bill (1783), Burke says: "All these circum- 
stances (ignorance of the language, customs, etc.) are not, I 
confess, very favourable to the idea of our attempting to govern 
India at all. But there we are; there we are placed by the 
Sovereign Disposer ; and we must do the best we can in our 
situation. The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty." 
Works, II. 465. 

40 4. concerning tlie unity of empire, etc. In his 
speech on ConcUiation with the Colonies (1775), Burke said: 
" It is said, indeed, that this power of granting (taxes), vested 
in American assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the empire, 
— which was preserved entire, although Wales, and Chester, 
and Durham were added to it . . . The very idea of 
subordination of parts excludes this notion of simple and un- 
divided unity. England is the head ; but she is not the head and 
the members too." Works, II. 170. Lord Chatham argued that 
the right to legislate does not include the right to tax. 

40 12. tlie Cutchery court. In British India, a court 
of justice or a collector's or any public office. 

40 15. government was a practical thing. In Re- 
flections on the Revolution in France, Burke said : " Govern- 
ment is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human 
wants." Works, III. 310. 

40 26. a free government is . . . xrhat the 
people think so. Dr. Johnson said : " I will let the King of 
France govern me on those conditions, for it is to be governed 
just as I please." When a friend talked of a girl being sent 
to a parish workhouse, and asked how much she could be 
obliged to work, Dr. Johnson replied : " Why, as much as is 
reasonable. And what is that? as much as she thinks is 



NOTES. 81 

reasonable." BoswdVs Johnson, edited by Birkbeck Hill, III. 
187. 

41 12. as if it were an abstract question. " Politics 
ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human 
nature; of which reason is but a part, and by no means the 
greatest part." Observations on the Present State of the Na- 
tion, Burke's Works, I. 398. 

42 23. liiberty too must be limited. In Reflections on 
the Revolution in France, Burke mentions the following limita- 
tion : " Society requires not only that the passions of individ- 
uals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, 
as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should 
frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions 
brought into subjection. This can only be done iy a poioer 
out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, sub- 
ject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to 
bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well 
as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights." 
Works, III. 310. 

43 7. tbe Sabbath . . . was made for man. 
"And he (Jesus) said unto them, the Sabbath was made for 
man, and not man for the Sabbath." Mark, II. 27 and Genesis, 
II. 2-3. 

44 22. of full two years' standing. The Battle of 
Lexington and Concord, 19 April, 1775, is considered the out- 
break of the war. 

45 1 6, by royal instruction or royal charter. The 
governments of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island 
were instituted by royal charter; the other colonies were gov- 
erned first by their proprietors and later by the King. 

46 17. these two legislatures. The English Parliament 
and the Colonial Assemblies. 

47 21. the colonies fell, etc. In A Memorial to the In- 
halitants of the Colonies, 21 Oct. 1774, the Continental Con- 
gress said: "After the repeal of the Stamp Act, having again 
resigned ourselves to our ancient unsuspicious affections for the 
parent state, and anxious to avoid any controversy with her, 
in hopes of a favourable alteration in sentiments and measures 
towards us, we did not press our objections against the above 
mentioned statutes made subsequent to that repeal." 



84 NOTES. 

48 2. a plan of pacification. The repeal of the Stamp 
Act, and the Declaratory Act, passed while Rockingham was 
Prime Minister. 

48 20. those almost unanimous members. A rather 
extravagant expression, for the Journal of the House of Com- 
mons says that on 4 March 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed 
by a vote of 250 to 122. Burke described it as " an event that 
caused more universal joy throughout the British dominions 
than perhaps any other that can be remembered." Lechy'g 
History of England, IV. 94. 

49 I. not a single murmur. " In America the effect of 
the news [of the repeal of the Stamp Act] was electric. There 
were bonfires in every town, while addresses of thanks to the 
king were voted in all the legislatures. Little heed was paid 
to the Declaratory Act, which was regarded merely as an 
artifice for saving the pride of the British government. There 
was a unanimous outburst of loyalty all over the country, and 
never did the people seem less in a mood for rebellion than 
now." Fislce's American Revolution, I. 27. 

49 9. a repeal of all tlie late coercive statutes. 
By his resolutions of 16 Nov. 1766, to give up the right of 
taxation, which were defeated by a vote of 210 to 105, 
according to the Journal of the House of Commons, or 210 
to 110 as Burke says, 50 8. See Annual Register, 1776, 
pp. 104-109. 

50 27, a formal obligation. See Introduction, p. 
xxviii. 

51 4. that ancient and powerful party. The Tories. 

51 i6. virtuous city. "The place that Bristol holds in 
our national history is one of peculiar importance, for it was 
for centuries the greatest purely trading town in a century 
that owes its greatness to its trade. For centuries it was 
second only to London." Hunfs Bristol, p. 1. 

52 13. a party man. See Introduction, p. xi. 

52 23. the Saviles, etc. Sir George Savile, (1726-1784), 
was member of the House of Commons for Yorkshire from 
1759-1783. He worked with Burke for the American colonies, 
for religious toleration, and for economical reform. He was 
" a staunch Whig of unimpeachable character and large for- 



NOTES. 83 

time. He devoted the whole of his time to public affairs, and 
was greatly respected by his contemporaries for his unbending 
integrity, and his unostentatious benevolence." 

William Dowdeswell, (1721-1775), was Chancellor of Ex- 
chequer under Rockingham. In the epitaph which Burke wrote 
for Dowdeswell's tomb, he spoke of him as " a senator for twenty 
years, a minister for one, a virtuous citizen for his whole life. 
. . . He understood beyond any man of his time the revenues 
of his country, which he preferred to everything except its liber- 
ties. He was a perfect master of the law of Parliament, and 
attached to its privileges until they were set up against the rights 
of the people. All the proceedings which have weakened Govern- 
ment, endangered freedom, and distracted the British empire, 
were by him strenuously opposed. And his last efforts under 
which his health sunk were to preserve his country from a 
civil war ; which being unable to prevent, he had not the mis- 
fortune to see." 

Charles Watson-W entworth, second Marquis of Rocking- 
ham, (1730-1782), was Prime Minister in 1765-1766 and 
secured the repeal of the Stamp Act and the passing of the 
Declaratory Bill. He became Prime Minister agam in 1782, 
after the fall of Lord North. Rockingham " carried out a 
steadily liberal policy with great good sense, a perfectly single 
mind, and uniform courtesy to opponents. He had the ad- 
vantage of following one of the most unpopular ministries, and 
the genius of Burke, who was his private secretary, and who 
was brought into Parliament by his influence, has cast a flood 
of light upon his administration and imparted a somewhat 
deceptive splendour to his memory. Few English statesmen of 
the highest rank have been more destitute of all superiority of 
intellect or knowledge. Few English ministries have been more 
feeble than that which he directed, yet it carried several meas- 
ures of capital importance." Lecky's England in the 18th 
Century, III. 271. See also 47 31. 

William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, third Duke of Portland, 
(1738-1809), became Lord Chamberlain of the Household and 
member of the Privy Council under Rockingham's first ministry 
in 1765. In 1782 he was sent to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. 
After Rockingham's death, Portland became the leader of the 



84 NOTES. 

Rockingham Whigs, and Prime Minister in the famous Coalition 
Ministry of 1783, in which Fox and Burke united with their old 
enemy. Lord North. Portland " was not a great speaker, but he 
had exactly the character which had enabled Rockingham to hold 
his party together ; he could always be trusted and his rank and 
wealth were suflSciently preeminent to prevent others from being 
jealous of his position. He did not make a good leader of an op- 
position ; he left all party tactics to Fox and Burke, and devoted 
himself more and more to his country life at his favourite seat, 
Bulstrode, and to the study of music, of which he was passion- 
ately fond." In 1792 he became allied with Pitt, acting as 
Secretary of State from 1794-1801. He acted as Lord President 
of the Council until 1806, and was Prime Minister from 1807- 
1809. 

Charles Lenox, third Duke of Richmond, (1735-1806), was 
appointed ambassador at Paris by Rockingham in 1765, and 
became Secretary of State the next year. He was Master Gen- 
eral of Ordnance in 1782 under Rockingham's second ministry. 
He was the great grandson of Charles II., and the uncle of 
Charles James Fox. 

George Montagu, fourth Duke of Manchester, (1737-1788), 
was appointed Lord Chamberlain by Rockingham in 1782, and 
later became ambassador to France. 

Augustus Keppel, Viscount Keppel, (1725-1786), was sent out 
as commodore to the Mediterranean to form a treaty with the 
Dey of Algiers, who angrily expressed surprise that *' the King 
of Great Britain should have sent a beardless boy to treat with 
him " ; Keppel replied : " Had my master supposed that wisdom 
was measured by the length of the beard, he would have sent 
your deyship a he-goat." In 1779, after an action against the 
French off Brest, Keppel was court-martialled on the charges of 
not marshalling his fleet, going into the fight in unofBcerlike man- 
ner, scandalous haste in quitting it, running away, and not 
pursuing the flying enemy — each charge a capital offence. 
The charges which had been presented by an inferior officer, 
were proved " malicious and ill-founded." In 1782 he be- 
came First Lord of the Admiralty under Rockingham's ministry. 
For Burke's opinion of Keppel, see the closing paragraphs of 
his Letter to a Noble Lord. 



NOTES. 86 

Sir Charles Saunders, (1713-1775), was the commander-in- 
chief of the English fleet which co-operated with General Wolfe 
to capture Quebec. 

Lord John Cavendish, (1732-1796), was Lord of the Treasury 
under Rockingham in 1765, and Chancellor of the Exchequer 
in 1782 and again under the Coalition Ministry of 1783. 
Burke described him as " an accomplished scholar, and an 
excellent critic, in every part of polite literature, thoroughly 
acquainted with history, ancient and modern ; with a sound 
judgment; a memory singularly retentive and exact, perfectly 
conversant in business, and particularly in that of finance ; of 
great integrity, great tenderness and sensibility of heart, with 
friendships few, but unalterable; of perfect disinterestedness; 
the ancient English reserve and simplicity of manner." Burke's 
Correspondence, IV. 526. 

53 21. all equally corrupt. Many believed in the re- 
mark, which Sir Robert Walpole was supposed to have uttered : 
'• Every man has his price." 

54 10. Titius and Maevius, " this man and that." These 
names are used in Roman law for the hypothetical persons of 
imaginary law-suits, like John Doe and Richard Roe in English 
law. See the Institutes of Oaius. 

56 25. conservatory. "A place where any thing is kept 
in a manner proper to its peculiar nature; as, fish in a pond, 
corn in a granary." Johnson's Dictionary. 

57 12. so sore a trial. Cf. " these are the times that try 
men's souls." Paine's Common Sense. 

57 1 8. the principles of our forefathers. *' The feel- 
ings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain." 
Burhe's American Taxation, Works, II. 17. 

58 22. Many things, etc. "What these things were 
Burke states at length in his pamphlet on The Present Discon- 
tents, published in 1770. In his opinion the chief circum- 
stances were, the immense and growing influence of the Court, 
the servility of Parliament, and, in particular, the abdication 
by the House of Commons of its proper function of a control 
on the executive government, and the supineness of the people." 
(Selby.) 



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school and home. Guide for parent and teacher $1.0U^ 
Character Building. Inspiring suggestions. $1.00. 
Bookkeeping Blanks at 30 cents per set. Five blank books 
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College Meti's S-Mlnute Declamations* Up-to-date 
selections from live men like Chauncey 
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College Maids* 3-Miaute Readings. 
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Pieces for Every Occasion. Including 
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Handy Pieces to Speak. Single pieces and 
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All three for ^o cts. On separate 
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Acme Declamation Book. Single pieces 
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Pros and Cons. Complete debates of the affirmative 
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Instantaneous Afbitfatof. Uowe^s Parliameniary Usage, 
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clubss too, being used and recommended by officers 
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New Parliamentary Manual* By Edmond Palmer, A. B., 
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Character: A Moral Text Book. By Henry Varnum. 
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the whole field of ethics and morals,'' 



